A Small Person Far Away

There was a pause. He looked away from her, over her right shoulder, as though he had suddenly seen someone he knew in the distance. Then he said stiffly, “She had grounds to believe that I was no longer faithful to her.”

Her first reaction was, impossible, he’s making it up. He was saying it to comfort her, so that she shouldn’t blame herself if Mama died. For heaven’s sake, she thought, at their age! Well, she supposed that if she had ever thought about it, she would have assumed that Mama’s relationship with him had not been entirely platonic. But this!

Very carefully, she said, “Are you in love with someone else?”

He gave a sort of snort of “No!” and then said in the same stiff voice as before, “I had an affair.”

“An affair?”

“It was nothing.” He was almost shouting with impatience. “A girl in my office. Nothing.”

She tried to think of a reply to this but couldn’t. She felt completely out of her depth and climbed into the car in silence.

“You’ll want some lunch.”

He seemed so relieved to have got the bit about the affair off his chest that she thought it must really be true.

As he started the car, he said, “I want to make your stay here as pleasant as possible. In the circumstances. I know it’s what your mother would wish. If possible even like a little holiday. I know you didn’t get away in the summer.”

For God’s sake, she thought.

He made a gesture of impatience. “I understand, of course, that you’d give anything not to be here but at home with Richard. I only meant that when you’re not at the hospital – and at the moment there is not much you can do there – you should have as pleasant a time as can be arranged.”

He glanced at her from behind the steering wheel and she nodded, since he seemed so anxious for her to agree.

“Well,” he said, “we may as well start by going somewhere pleasant for lunch.”

The restaurant was set among the pine trees of the Grunewald, a popular place for family outings, and on this fine Sunday it was packed. Some people were even drinking at small tables outside, their overcoats well-buttoned against the chilly air.

“Do you remember this place?” he asked.

She had already had a faint sense of recognition – something about the shape of the building, the colour of the stone.

“I think I may have come here sometimes with my parents. Not to eat, just for a drink.”

He smiled. “Himbeersaft.”

“That’s right.” Raspberry juice, of course. That’s what German children always drank.

Inside, the dining room was steaming up with the breath of many good eaters, their coats hung in rows against the brown panelled walls, and mounted above them, two pairs of antlers and a picture of a hunter with a gun. Their voices were loud and comfortable above the clinking of their knives and forks, and Anna found herself both moved and yet suspicious as always, at the sound of the Berlin accents so familiar from her childhood.

“This thing with your mother has been going on for nearly three weeks,” said Konrad in English, and the voices with their complicated associations faded into the background. “That’s how long she had known.”

“How did she find out?”

“I told her.”

Why? she thought, and as though he had heard her, he went on, “We live in a very narrow circle. I was afraid she might hear from someone else.”

“But if you don’t really love this woman – if it’s all over?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “You know what mother is like. She said that things could never again be right between us. She said she’d had to start again too many times in her life, she’d had enough, that you and Max were grown up and no longer needed her—” He waved his hand to indicate all the other things Mama had said and which Anna could only too easily imagine. “She’s been talking about killing herself for nearly three weeks.”

But he hadn’t actually said that it was all over between himself and the other woman.

“The affair, of course, is finished,” he said.

When the food arrived, he said, “We’ll go to the hospital after lunch. Then you can see your mother and perhaps talk to one of the doctors. In the meantime, tell me about yourself and Richard.”

She told him about Richard’s serial, about the flat and about her new job.

“Does this mean that you’ll eventually become a writer?”

“Like Richard, you mean?”

“Or like your father.”

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you know?” he asked almost impatiently.

She tried to explain. “I don’t know if I’d be good enough. Till now I’ve really only tinkered with other people’s plays. I’ve never done anything of my own.”

“I could imagine you being a good writer.” But he added at once, “Of course I know nothing about it.”

They tried to talk about general subjects: Hungary, but neither of them had listened to the radio that morning, so they did not know the latest news; the German economic recovery; how long it would take Max to get a flight from Greece. But gradually the conversation faltered and died. The sound of the Berliners eating and talking seeped into the silence. Familiar, long-forgotten words and phrases.

“Bitte ein Nusstörtchen,” a fat man at the next table told the waiter.

That’s what I always used to eat when I was small, she thought. A little white iced cake with a nut on the top. And Max had always chosen a Mohrenkopf, which was covered in chocolate and had cream inside. They had never wavered in their preferences and had both come to believe that the one was only for the girls and the other for boys.

“Ein Nusstörtchen,” said the waiter and set it down in front of the fat man.

Even now, for a fraction of a second, Anna was surprised that he let him have it.

“You’re not eating,” said Konrad.

“I’m sorry.” She speared a bit of potato on her fork.

“Try to eat. It’ll be better. The next few days are bound to be difficult.”

She nodded and ate while he watched her.

“The hospital your mother is at is German. It’s just as good as the American for this kind of case, and it was nearer. Also I thought that if your mother recovered, it would be easier for her if the Americans didn’t know about her suicide attempt.” He waited for her to agree, and she nodded again. “When I found her—”

“You found her?”

“Of course.” He seemed surprised. “You understand, I’ve been afraid of this happening. I stayed with her as much as possible. But the night before, she seemed all right, so I left her. Only next day I had such a feeling… I went round to her flat and there she was. I stood and looked at her and didn’t know what to do.”