The Sunflower Forest

‘Like I said, it’s probably nothing at all. Just a funny idea of hers. Maybe somebody she remembers from before. You know. From Germany or somewhere. I wouldn’t get all upset about it.’

‘You weren’t there. You don’t know what it was like.’

‘Just the same, I wouldn’t worry about it.’

‘But who is he?’

‘Megan, I said I don’t know. I don’t. I’ve never even heard of anyone around here named Klaus. So don’t cry about it anymore, OK? It’s probably nothing.’

‘You know what she said, though? She said to him, “Klaus, come back here. It’s Mama. Come back, it’s me, Mama.”’

Megan remained upset. I was unable to talk her out of it, and she was unable to forget it. She stayed up in her room and told my father that she was sick in her stomach when he came up to see why she hadn’t come to supper. She put on her pyjamas and crawled under the covers and stayed there. I didn’t bother her. Nor did I tell Dad what had happened. If it was one of Mama’s imaginings, there was not much to be done about it, and I saw no point in upsetting him too. And I couldn’t fathom what else it could be.

All through supper and into the evening, I watched Mama closely and wondered. That was a strange thing for her to do. Even by Mama’s standards, it was weird. I wondered what she could have been thinking of.

If anything, my mother was more buoyant that evening than she had been in months. The wind had burned the skin along her cheekbones, giving her a ruddy, healthy look. She had removed the yarn tie, and her hair lay thick and pale over her shoulders, catching the glow of the kitchen light as she moved. She and my father joked around. While he was drying the dishes, he flicked her playfully with the dish towel, and she squealed like a schoolgirl. Later, they went upstairs, hand in hand, and left me to watch television by myself.

Mama was pacing. I woke slowly to the sound, not quite realizing it wasn’t part of my dream until I was fully awake. I turned to look at the alarm clock. Four-fourteen. Putting the pillow over my head, I tried to shut out the sound.

Mama had always had trouble sleeping. Her insomnia was periodic. Sometimes she’d go seven or eight months without difficulties, then she’d start waking up in the night and be unable to go back to sleep. She said it was her back. Her back would ache, and she couldn’t sleep because of the pain. Then she’d go to the doctor for a prescription, sometimes for her back, sometimes for the insomnia. Nothing worked for long. If she was in the midst of one of her wakeful periods, she woke up, pills or no pills.

‘Mama, what’s the matter?’ I stood at the bottom of the stairs. She was by the living-room window. In her long cotton nightgown, she looked like a ghost in the darkness. The only light came from the glowing end of her cigarette.

When I spoke, she started and turned. I came farther into the room and bent down to switch on one of the table lamps. She squinted in the sudden brightness.

‘Can’t you sleep?’ I asked.

She shook her head.

‘What’s wrong?’

At first she did not respond. Then slowly she dragged a hand up and touched the small of her back. ‘It’s just the old hurt, Liebes. I shouldn’t have walked so far today. I overdid it. That’s all.’

‘Do you want me to rub it for you? You want to go up to my room and lie down on the bed? I think we’ve got some rubbing alcohol.’

She shook her head.

Shivering in the pre-dawn chill, I watched her. Her hair, mussed from sleep, splayed over her gown. She had broad shoulders, which the gown emphasized. I noticed she was losing weight again. Long-term dysentery during the war had played havoc with her system, and she still suffered frequent, severe bouts of diarrhoea; consequently, she never could keep weight on, even with her prodigious appetite. And when she did gain weight and was well within the norms for someone her height, she still looked underweight. Her skin fitted loosely, making her always appear too thin.

‘Shall I make you a cup of hot milk, Mama?’

No answer.

‘A cup of tea? Would you like a cup of tea? India tea, maybe? I wouldn’t mind a cup myself. How ’bout if I fix you one too?’

‘No thanks,’ she said. She kept her back to me and watched out the window. I doubted that she could see much, because the lamplight obscured any view into the darkness beyond the glass. But she watched anyway, absorbed.

I noticed her feet were bare. ‘Mama, come sit down. It’s too cold for you over there. Cripes, I’m freezing.’

Her eyes remained focused on some point in the darkness.

‘Mama, was ist los?’ I asked. She was always most comfortable in German. Even more so than Hungarian, I believe. German had been her language with Mutti, the one of nursery rhymes and children’s songs and a mother’s secret words for her small daughter. We never could settle on a language in our family. Mama slid back and forth at will between German, Hungarian and English, often in the same conversation. But it was German she took comfort from.

Still she gazed at the glass. Bringing a hand up, she scratched along the side of her face in a slow, pensive motion and then dropped her hand and locked it behind her back. In the reflection of the glass, I saw her eyes narrow, as if she were seeing something out there, and her forehead wrinkled into a frown of concentration.

‘I saw him,’ she said very, very softly.

‘Wer, Mama?’ I asked.

She said nothing.

‘Wer, Mama? Klaus?’

Sharply, she turned and looked at me.

‘I know about him. Megan told me about him this afternoon.’

She sighed and once again turned away from me. I saw she was shivering too.

‘Mama, come away from the window. It’s too cold there for you. Here, take the afghan.’

She didn’t move.

I had the afghan around my shoulders. Bringing it over, I tried to hand it to her but she didn’t take it. So I wrapped it back around myself. My stomach felt sick, and I thought perhaps Megan really did have something and I had caught it. I almost hoped so. Then my mother would have to take care of me.

‘I saw him,’ she whispered, her breath clouding the glass. ‘I’ve found him. The Scheisskerle, they could not keep him hidden from me.’

‘What, Mama?’

‘Him,’ she said, nodding her head slightly at the window. ‘The bastards, they thought I’d never find him. The stupid swine. They thought they’d had the better of me. But they never did. I’ve found him now.’

‘Who, Mama?’

‘Mein Sohn.’

Chapter Nine (#ulink_91c58fe6-9a52-5297-9e7c-f513c104b23d)

‘Dad,’ I said, ‘I need to talk to you.’

He had a shovel in one hand and a cardboard box in the other. Sunday, like Saturday, had come up warm and bright and smelling of spring. Mama was still asleep on the couch in the living room when my father had gotten up, so he had made himself breakfast, put on his gardening clothes and gone out into the backyard. Mama was still sleeping when I rose too. I didn’t eat. My stomach felt all right, but I wasn’t hungry. Instead, I pursued my father into the garden.

‘What about?’ he asked and put a shovel into the damp earth. He turned a spadeful over.

‘Well, I got to thinking,’ I said. I watched him. With slow, almost rhythmic movements, he spaded up the length of the flower bed. When he came to the end, he paused and leaned on the shovel handle.

‘About what?’ he asked.

‘Well, you know how back in January Mama was acting like she might like to move?’