Summer Lies (21 page)

Would his father have sold his house and given him a delivery van if he’d needed it? Would his father have put on blue coveralls and a white face mask and helped him clean crime scenes? He didn’t know. For him and his father it wouldn’t have been about delivery vans and coveralls and face masks. Would his father have supported him if he’d lost his job because of his political involvements? Helped him to start again in another profession or another country? Or would he have felt it served him right and he didn’t deserve any help?

Even if his father had helped him—it would never have happened in the atmosphere of silent intimacy that existed between father and daughter in the movie. It was a miniature happy ending within the large vague ending of the film. It was a tiny miracle. So tears were allowed.

He had intended to take a taxi home and get back to work on the article the newspaper wanted to publish at the beginning
of next week. But when he came out of the movie theater and felt the soft night air of summer, he decided to walk. Across the square, past the museum, along the river—he was astonished at how lively the streets were. Groups of tourists came toward him, and parents and kids were often out together. He was particularly moved by a group of Italians. Grandfather and grandmother, father and mother, sons and daughters plus their boyfriends and girlfriends came toward him, arms linked, walking lightly, singing quietly, giving him friendly, inquiring, inviting looks, and had passed him before he could even begin to imagine what the inquiry and the invitation might represent and how he might respond. Am I, he wondered, turning sentimental when I see parents and children happy together?

He asked himself the same question again later while he was having a glass of wine in his local Italian restaurant. A father and son were having a lively, friendly conversation two tables over. Then his mood changed; he turned envious, irritable, and bitter. He couldn’t remember a single similar conversation with his father. Any time they were talking animatedly, it was an argument over politics or the law or society. The only time they talked in a friendly way was when they were exchanging trivialities.

The next morning his mood changed again. It was Sunday, he had breakfast out on the balcony, the sun shone, thrushes were singing, and the church bells were ringing. He didn’t want to be bitter. He also didn’t want there to be nothing except tired or bad memories when his father died. When his parents were back from church, he called them. His mother picked up, as she always did, and as always, after the exchange of questions about archives, health, and the weather, the conversation faltered.

“Do you think I could invite Father on a little trip?”

It took some time for her to reply. He knew that there was nothing she wanted more than better relations between her children and her husband. Was she hesitating because she couldn’t grasp the pleasure she felt at his question? Or because she was afraid the situation between him and his father was already far gone? Finally she asked, “What sort of a little trip are you thinking of?”

“What Father and I both like is the sea and Bach’s music.” He laughed. “Can you think of anything else we both like? I can’t. In September there’s a little Bach festival on Ruegen, and I’m thinking of two or three days with a few concerts and some walks on the beach.”

“Without me.”

“Yes, without you.”

Again there was a pause before his mother answered. As if giving herself a shake, she finally said, “What a lovely idea! Can you write your father a letter? I’m afraid he’ll feel pressured on the phone and react negatively. And then he’ll soon regret it. But why have to sort things out after the fact when a letter will work better to begin with?”

On a Thursday in September he picked up his father in the little town where his parents lived and where he’d grown up. The hotel rooms and concert tickets were booked. He had decided against the larger places with their fine turn-of-the-century houses; his father liked things simple, so they were going to stay in a plain hotel in a little village where the beaches ran on for miles. They would hear the French Suites on Friday afternoon, two Brandenburg Concertos and the Italian Concerto
on Saturday evening, and motets on Sunday afternoon. He had printed out the concert programs and gave them to his father when they were on the Autobahn. He had also worked out what he wanted to ask his father along the way: about his childhood and youth and his studies and the beginning of his career. It should all go without any arguments.

“Lovely,” said his father when he’d read the programs, and then was silent. He sat upright, legs crossed, arms on the armrests, and hands hanging down. That was the way he sat in his armchair at home and that was also how he’d seen him when he paid a visit to him in court before he finished high school and witnessed him during a trial. He seemed relaxed, and the angle of his head and the hint of a smile indicated that he was focused and listening carefully. At the same time it was a posture that spoke of distance; it was the relaxed body language of someone who doesn’t relate to people or situations, who’s hiding behind his smile and listening with great skepticism. Since to his own horror he’d caught himself on several occasions sitting the same way as his father, he knew what it signified.

He asked him about his earliest memory and learned about the sailor suit his father had been given for Christmas when he was three. He asked about what he’d liked and hated in school, and his father became more talkative and told him about doing drill at gym, and patriotic history lessons and the difficulty he had writing essays until he started imitating articles he read in a book he found in his father’s cupboard. He told him about dancing classes and gatherings of the twelfth graders where people drank the way they drank in student clubs and afterward the ones who felt particularly grown-up went to brothels. No, he’d never gone along, and he’d never kept pace with their drinking, either, except halfheartedly. He’d refused to join any fraternity when he was a student although his father pushed him to. He’d wanted to study and encounter the riches
of the mind at university, after the pittance there had been in high school. He talked about professors he’d heard, events he’d attended, and then he got tired.

“You can put the seat back and sleep.”

He did so. “I’m just going to rest.” But it wasn’t long before he was asleep, snoring and occasionally smacking his lips.

His father asleep—he realized he’d never seen this before. He couldn’t remember as a child ever having rolled around in bed with his parents, or gone to sleep or woken up with them. They had taken their holidays without the children; he and his brothers and sister had been sent to their grandparents or aunts and uncles. He liked this; holidays were freedom not just from school but from his parents too. He looked over at his father, saw the stubble on his chin and cheeks, the hairs growing out of his nose and his ears, the spittle in the corner of his mouth, and the burst blood vessels around his nose. He also smelled his father’s smell, a little stale and a little sour. He was glad that aside from the ritual hello and goodbye kisses, which mostly he could avoid, there was no intimacy between his parents and him either now or in earlier days. Then he wondered if he’d feel more affectionate toward his father’s body if there had been.

He stopped for gas, and his father turned on his side as best he could and kept on sleeping. While he was stuck in traffic, an ambulance cut its way through with flashing blue lights and the siren going, and his father murmured something but didn’t wake up. His father’s deep sleep annoyed him; it struck him as an expression of the clear conscience with which his father had gone self-righteously through life, judging and condemning him. But then the traffic jam broke up, he drove around Berlin, through Brandenburg, and reached Mecklenburg. The bare landscape fitted his melancholy mood, and the onset of dusk was suitably mild.

“How still the world and in the shroud of twilight how
intimate and fair.” His father was awake and quoting Matthias Claudius. He smiled at him and his father smiled back. “I dreamed about your sister, when she was small. She climbed up a tree, higher and higher, and then flew into my arms, as light as a feather.”

His sister was the child of his father’s first wife, who had died in childbirth, and was known in the family as heavenly mother, as opposed to his second wife, who was present here as earthly mother. His second wife was the mother of his two sons and had also become mother to his sister; the children had always regarded themselves as fully related, never as half brothers and sister. But he had sometimes wondered if his father’s particular love for his sister was an extension of his love of his first wife. The twilight, his smile, the telling of his dream as an acknowledgment of longing and a sign of trust—he thought he could ask his father a question. “What was your first wife like?”

His father didn’t reply. They drove from twilight into darkness, and his face became invisible and unreadable. He cleared his throat but said nothing. When his son was about to give up hope of a response, the father said, “Oh, not so different from Mama.”

The next morning he woke up early. Lying in bed he wondered if his father had evaded him or had nothing more he could say about his first wife than he had said. Had he made the two women into a single person in his thoughts and feelings, because he couldn’t bear the tension of remembering and mourning and forgetting?

These were not questions he could ask his father over breakfast.
They sat on the terrace with a view out over the sea. His father passed on greetings from Mama, to whom he’d just spoken on the phone, cut the top off his egg, put ham on one half of his roll and cheese on the other, and ate with silent concentration. When he’d finished, he read the paper.

What did he and his mother have to talk about on the phone? Did they just tell each other how they’d slept and what the weather was like here and back there? Why did he call her Mama, when none of the children did? Was he interested by the newspaper or just hiding behind it? Did he feel trapped by this journey with his son?

“I expect you’re pleased that the government …”

It sounded as if his father wanted to launch into one of their customary political arguments. He didn’t let him finish. “I haven’t read the paper for days. Not till next week. Shall we take a walk on the beach?” His father insisted on reading the rest of the paper, but stopped trying to draw him into an argument. Finally he folded the paper and laid it on the table. “Shall we?”

They walked along the shore, his father in a suit and tie and black shoes, he in shirt and jeans, his sneakers tied by the laces and hanging over his shoulder. “You were talking about your student days on the way here—what came next? Why didn’t you have to fight in the war? What exactly was the reason you lost your position as a judge? Did you like being a lawyer?”

“Four questions at once! Back then I already had the arrhythmia I still have now; that’s what saved me from the war. I lost my position as a judge because I gave the Confessional Church legal advice. That angered both the president of the State Court and the Gestapo. So I became a lawyer and as such continued to advise the church. My partners in the law firm didn’t hinder me; I had almost no involvement in regular legal work like contracts
and forming companies and arranging mortgages and drawing up wills, and I almost never appeared in court.”

“I read the essay you wrote in 1945 in the
Tageblatt
. No hatred for the Nazis, no settling of accounts, no retaliation, pull together to cope with need, pull together to rebuild shattered towns and villages, solidarity with the refugees—why so forgiving? The Nazis did worse things, I know, but they did also destroy your position.”

They made slow progress in the sand. His father made no move to take off his shoes and socks and roll up his trousers, but walked awkwardly, step by step. He didn’t care that they would never get to the end of the long, shining beach this way and reach Cape Arkona—but he was sure his father did, because he always had goals and made plans, and had asked questions about the Cape at breakfast. In three hours they had to be back at the hotel.

Once again he was ready to give up hope of any answer when his father said, “You can’t imagine what it’s like when life goes off the rails. The only thing that matters then is to reestablish order.”

“The president of the State Court …”

“…   greeted me amicably in the fall of 1945 as if I’d just returned from an extended holiday. He wasn’t a bad judge or a bad president. He’d gone off the rails like everyone, and like everyone he was glad it was over.”

He saw the beads of sweat on his father’s forehead and cheeks. “Would you go off the rails if you took off your jacket and tie and went barefoot?”

“No.” He laughed. “Maybe I’ll try that tomorrow. Today I’d like to sit down by the sea and look at the waves. How about right here?” He didn’t say whether he couldn’t go on or whether he didn’t want to. He hitched up his trouser legs so
they wouldn’t crease at the knees, sat down cross-legged on the sand, looked out to sea, and said nothing more.

He sat down beside his father. Once he’d rid himself of the feeling that they somehow had to talk to each other, he began to enjoy the view out over the sea, the white clouds, the interplay of sun and shade, the salty air, and the light breeze.

“How come you read my essay from 1945?” It was the first question his father had asked him since they’d set out, and he couldn’t detect whether it was mistrustful or merely curious.

“I did a favor for a colleague at the
Tageblatt
and he sent me a copy of your piece. I’m guessing he checked in the archives to see if there was anything that might interest me.”

His father nodded.

“Were you afraid when you were advising the Confessional Church?”

His father uncrossed his legs, stretched them in front of him, and propped himself on his elbows. It looked uncomfortable and clearly was, because after a time he sat up again and went back to sitting cross-legged. “For a long time I intended to write something about fear. But when I retired and had the time, I didn’t do it.”