Chapter 1: 73

73

„Seventy-three. Come on, Lenni!“

Dog-cold, the wind bites with waves of the finest pinpricks into the naked and sparsely haired surfaces of two personalities who could not be more different in grace and mentality, whose natural endeavor to come together is supported by mutual respect.

„Don’t think about staying out,“ she pats him. „You Mexican bat have too thin a skin.“

The midday sun penetrates deep into the Baltic seaside resort of Hollow Born’s city forest, which is bare of foliage at this time of year, illuminating the silky-soft mist above the thicket and the tall, aged beeches and maples appear like individual witnesses of time, hidden in absorbent cotton undergrowth, silent in noble restraint. A reforested piece of cultivated landscape, crisscrossed by axes, whose narrowness is conspicuous to those who do not make a living from its stands in nothing other than the will of the visitors to leave it again in good time in order to turn to new surroundings.

Lenni’s mistress comes with him from some of the ‚walks‘ that were carved into the forest over a hundred years ago. The paths were approved to enrich the moments outside the bathing experience of vacationers seeking relaxation and edification in the most pleasant way. On the way back from another mission, Lenni and Bertha are on the last few meters of the sidewalk up to the flat garden door of the front garden of their house on Beach Road, which, like the fence, is covered with green rabbit wire to prevent the dog from slipping through. She moves carefully to her destination, the highest point of the street, opposite the former Imperial Post Office. The patches of snow and ice that cause moments of shock have been a thing of the past for two months. The large paving slabs remain free of obstacles. It is their own positional characteristics that demand attention in some places. The magnificent, medium-sized street trees, which complement the ancient, radically shaved lime trees that will sprout again in a few weeks, lend the sidewalk increased expressiveness by showing a new facet of participation beyond their climatic-aesthetic contribution and the shade they provide. With their roots, they position the slabs that fall into their clutches in the image of their vitality. Minimal deviations encourage passers-by not to shuffle along. The elderly lady in her late eighties forces herself to appreciate the individual plates every day with every step she takes.

„Hi Bertha. Seventy-three? Are you counting? It’s a bit early,“ calls a quarrelsome voice from a convertible-like, red light vehicle of small size and seat height with thin off-road tires and a careless, arm-length loading area framed in wood. Silently, and consequently unnoticed, it comes to a halt in the driveway. A woman sits in it, laughing as she is picked up, her face and habit with a look flanked by fire, fresher than the date of birth on her ID card would suggest.

The summoned woman remains bent over, facing the animal, her head with its short gray hair hidden in the dark blue felt coat lying heavily on her shoulders.

„Early? For whom? Did you fall out of bed? Or are you talking about the season?“

„What do you think?“

„I count out of habit. Waiting in line at the supermarket checkout is no longer my thing. TheKONSUM days are over. When I’m waiting, my last waking moments run away,“ she mutters self-explanatorily in the direction of her dog sitting in front of her, who, contrary to his usual practice of not barking, is running around in excitement and inspecting the intruder - friend or stranger. „Why are you shouting? I’m old, not deaf,“ she bitches, directly addressed, in equal, low-pulse argumentativeness. She straightens up, turns around and looks at the person standing on the small vehicle in her driveway, which has been unused and overgrown with moss for years, with an expression of sublime disapproval.

„Hi Hanna. What do you want with the French toy in the city, in winter, far away from home?“

„For the six kilometers, it’s not necessary to drive Jean to the power socket. I could get to Rostock and back.“

„That’s not a dog on the walk to unload. Here we go again. What kind of granny drives around with a soapbox that has escaped from Kinderland or the golf course, talks about it as if it were a mutt and names it after a prophet? In French? You were always different. I don’t understand that. We’re from the very old families who were there before the first vacationers moved here. Tell Trixi that her grandfather was a hero - and broad-shouldered. You can’t tell with her,“ grumbles Bertha Finow, her eyes fixed on Hanna Glowatz, moving towards her with the wear and tear of years in her bones and repeatedly hitting one of the vehicle’s tires with her walking stick.

The grumpy grandmother of five shivers briefly, laughs appreciatively, shakes her head with her gray-brunette hair, which is thin in parts and well over shoulder length, but full of body under her waxed baseball cap, points to the cane and presents her open hand to the biting aunt of one of her former school friends, who has been losing her sprightliness of late. They have known each other since Hanna’s childhood and are familiar, even fond of each other like siblings, accompanied by an unexpected and carefully concealed mellowness of age. The encouragement is preceded by formal elements that are enough to dupe or frighten anyone unfamiliar with the region, which would not persuade the two to change their style. Not to be commented on is a concession that gives the North German impression of a lack of eloquence. The age difference between Bertha and Hanna is irrelevant. Beyond the age of sixty, differences are relativized to banalities and the progress of life can be seen in the respective daily form. So far, this has mostly concerned physical ailments. Increasingly, minor cognitive lapses are affecting their conversations, and it takes many more content-related potholes to hinder sufficiently sustainable communication. Bertha’s wear and tear is clearly evident on some days, but this does not cause Hanna to become generally inhibited.

„Oh, great-grandma was dreaming of strength because you survived the winter without breaking a leg? That’s understandable. And leave Jean alone. John is the patron saint of farmers. Or are you demanding his imitation radiator grille, Salome?“

„Tiddlywinks. Have you decided to annoy me? Go on, I’ll soon be gone; gone like your undergrowth - you live on sea buckthorn. Not that you’ll all move in with me because you’ll run out of steam and your son-in-law will put the farm at risk, again.“

„Oh, is that what they say? What are you waiting for? Is there nothing to gossip about? What makes you think Gerd ever endangered the farm? Nonsense. Your selfless concern is boredom. There’s not much going on out of season. You’re remnants of local storytellers. We’ll only move in with you over your cold, frozen corpse.“

„My speech. You don’t scare me. Forget it, I’m staying. Women are tougher. They don’t moan, they argue. They’re not fairy tales. You were born right here.“ Her round face, flushed from the icy wind, falls in at the cheeks the moment she draws her eyebrows together and opens her mouth a crack. The tiniest clouds of mist in front of her lips are evidence of shallow, labored breathing that falters before the change of rhythm. „Hanna, I’m not drooling. This is a real problem. You need to do something urgently. Your plantations are dry. They burn like tinder in summer. There’s not a drop of sap left in the branches. Your undergrowth is worthless and will end up burning down the forest with us.“

 

Sea buckthorn is one of Bertha’s favorite topics. Her family had been involved in the success of the golden berries since the late seventies of the last century as part of the optimization of varieties in an agricultural production community. The directives came from Berlin, as did the high-performance varieties.

„Small stuff. I do it on the side,“ replies Hanna in a monotone. „Why the experts? Why panic? Existences? Never mind, I’ll do it. Seriously, Bertha, there’s no need to worry. We have a high stock level due to the miserable business with a lack of tourists in the Corona years.“

„What’s on the table is crucial, not how it arrives or is packaged. If your pantry is empty, there’s nothing to eat. It doesn’t matter how it’s refrigerated. You have to do something. It’s not like it used to be. You don’t have seven years to save up for a Trabbi (GDR car) you ordered. Giving up smoking and fruit for two of those years won’t get you out of the mess. There’s no way you can go on. You could lose the farm, as they say.“

„You have no idea. The goods are stacked to the ceiling, in all shelf-stable varieties. From oil and soap to bottled nectar and dry concentrate. We survived despite the low sales.“ Hanna nods in conclusion and pulls her leg, which was already outside the doorless vehicle, back into the footwell. She is wearing jeans that are unseemly for her age and the shadow-mullet red work shoes that look like combat boots and shine next to the accelerator and brake pedals.

„Your word. And now? What are you going to do?“

„Holiday makers are coming back. Products made from sea buckthorn are in demand among guests. With what is processed, we are plugging the holes left by the coming crop failures. We have three or four years to make ends meet with declining yields.“ She stretches in an unusually expansive manner and nods in agreement with her own explanation.

„If that’s ever enough.“

„Bertha, I’m still here too.“ Hanna looks cheerfully at her friend. „I’m going to the seaside for a cappuccino. Jump in, you two bores.“

„Nah, let it go. I’m cold no matter what I’m wearing. This is the weather for curling up and watching TV.“

„Tell me about it. I’m just as happy to be back in the house these days.“

„You’ve got the wrong car.“

„Leisurely and short distances. Others cycle. I’m less of a danger with the lightweight bike and it keeps me fresh without weighing me down. Last night, lazing around was also on my agenda. There was a really nice movie on. You have to come up with that first.“

„What was it about?“

„American. Last wishes from two old men who don’t have long left and who ...“

„Wish list. The list they tick off. I know it. He’s friendly. Wonderful actors.“ Bertha pauses, looks towards the city forest and looks at some of the magnificent, currently leafless trees. „The two geezers at least had an idea of how much time they’d have left to get down to business. Although - I wouldn’t want to know. Quickly and surprisingly, preferably in my sleep would be my preference, if you could choose. It happens and it’s inconvenient. Like pregnancy. It never fits. When you die, it’s better than the other way around. If you wait for it, you’re stuck except for the few knowing and sublime smiles that get on your nerves while you’re still alive. The suffering in body and mind seems too intense to survive. Shit is not a birthday cake and life is anything but a concert of wishes all day long.“

„Bertha, a game, because you like to talk about your demise. Suppose you knew that you had the last two weeks on the clock until it was non-negotiable; what three realistically achievable dreams would you want to fulfill before you left?“

„Like the two old ones? Without the resurrection of dead husbands and the radiant white-toothed senses for world peace, like Miss America?“

„Yes, you want something and it’s feasible. Even a flight through space, if you like. Anything is possible now. The main thing is that the weather is fine at take-off and there’s enough air on board. When I saw the movie yesterday, I had three wishes in no time at all without having to think about them for long. So, go ahead. Off into space?“

„I have no idea. I would like to have my family close by. It’s comforting to see the ones you love - that it goes on and wasn’t in vain. They would definitely come to my deathbed if I didn’t suddenly disappear,“ she murmurs, a smile crossing her lips. She turns away and looks into one of the bare treetops along the road. „My second wish would be for it to be spring there - somewhere warm, smelling fresh and in bloom. Dying is gloomy enough.“

„Don’t you have anything you wish for that isn’t directly related to your death?“

„So...“

„Go ahead. Say it.“

„I would like to stroke a koala bear and a penguin. Those are two wishes.“

„Still applies. - Penguin? How does it feel?“

„That’s the thing. I suppose like a tight mole, but I like to be surprised and proved wrong when I meet one.“ She shows a hint of a smirk. „And what are the last wishes you came up with at the movie?“

„One is a childhood wish. Ever since I was a little girl and actually stayed, I always wanted to walk on the cobblestones in an Italian town in a red summer dress.“

„The border is open. What are you waiting for? Even you won’t get any fresher. Just do it. And the next one?“

„I would love to be the only visitor in a Gothic church, preferably a cathedral, and someone playing Johann Sebastian Bach on the organ.“

„Just for you in the hall that seats more than a thousand people? Why is that? Depression or pompous?“

„For me, it’s not about exclusivity, but about being alone in the room. Without human emotion of any kind. Church interiors are completely different when they are not burdened by the restlessness of everyday life.“

„And what should be played? Mainly Bach?“

„That’s too personal for me, I don’t want to say that.“

„All right, someone will know and the guy at the organ will have to find out from you. And your last one?“

„I’d have to get a dog again, which is nonsense when it comes to dying, but for my wish I need one of my own, preferably a huge shepherd dog. I’d love to sit at a table by the sea with him - he’d sit next to me, of course - and we’d eat a roast goose together.“

„Completely different to me. At least two of your wishes - I’m not sure about the organ concert - have more to do with life than death. Apart from the pooch, there’s no one else in your family, but it’s all doable. After all, your brother Peter is ...“

„I know. It’s too personal. The picture has to fit.“

„What could be closer than family?“

„Wait, that would be a different question and we are talking exclusively about me, not about my willingness to sacrifice for those I love, those who belong to them or even you.“

„The main thing is that you don’t think you can die when you’re done with the list. It’s not a chore list with subsequent redemption. But it is strange. Like a life. - Dress, table setting and farewell. Among people, with confidants, in the end with you alone - or not at all, before you correct me again. - Just do it. Get a ticket, thunder off to Italy, buy yourself a dress and on the way back get a dog and go out for dinner. You’ll find an organ.“

„And you? How are you going to handle it?“

„It’s not about the first two wishes as long as I don’t get the message. And penguins can wait. They don’t stand for anything.“

„I think they say a lot about you. How many of those marching towards the hundred do you know who wonder what a greasy bird from the South Pole feels like?“

„None. It’s not the animal’s fault. It’s because the other old ones have already gone. - As I said, I’m going to doze off today. And later it’s time for the magazine and a puzzle book. In the afternoon, on our round,“ she looks at Lenni, who is taking part in the conversation with a gentle wag of his skinny tail sticking up, „an Irish coffee and a brownie at Lime Park.“

„You and foreign food?“

„Brownies there and solyanka somewhere else. There is nothing left in stock. Fish sandwiches and ice cream scoops will once again be the measuring sticks and bone of contention this summer. They’ll be on TV all the time, just like angry residents. - We’ll soon have them here too. - Not that we have a reason.“

„This is due to inflation, the cost of switching to climate protection, but low flight costs ...“

„Corona, wars, armaments costs, lazy children. - The hands are turning faster. I have five names of money in my bones without having moved.“

„You mean currencies.“

„Smart a... chatterbox!“

„Smart aleck please!“

„You too?“

„I remain a feminist.“

„You will become more.“

„I hope so.“

„I hear your apple pie is very good.“

„Is that what they say?“

„The fact that you went back to your maiden name after all that is something else. Everyone who witnessed it back then understands that. The first man lived too short a life, the second, the drunkard, still too long.“

Bertha taps the outside of her coat pocket, feels resistance and is visibly reassured. „I’m not talking about the wallet. If I were to list all the newfangled payment options ... It’s crazy. The most impersonal thing you can imagine: A common medium of exchange as a cultural medium. Many would like a change. - Certainly to an imperial eagle with Eastern livery.“ She laughs. „German aluminum chips for the sausage pizza. Nah, Hanna, I’ll stay at home and watch the news and get annoyed at the old people who think they can rule the world and wannabe‘s who lack everything except money and onlookers.“

„If you need anything or want me to take you to the doctor, call. Your children don’t have time to listen to the same stories in series.“

„Thank you, no. Doctor Paulsen lives across the street and my family loves me, they say.“

„We all claim to love you. Next week I’ll come over with cake; have a quiet chat about old times.“

„Do you want coffee? I’m not that fine here and Erich’s (Honnecker) crowning (Western Germany coffee brand) glory is out. I only have tea in the house.“

„Sure, you drink your Irish coffee out. Come up with something. Bye, Bertha.“

„Hanna.“ She nods her head to the slim woman in her late sixties, who turns around with her bobble hat in her seat, silently reverses the car, turns back, waves and drives along the beach road towards the Baltic Sea.

Bertha sees the vehicle, which is in a good mood and fits almost crosswise into parking spaces, until it turns right onto Doberaner Street with the priority road due to the beginning of the single lane.

 

„Not to be killed,“ says the elderly woman of dwindling sprightliness and shakes her head approvingly, seemingly following the first impulse to move. She smiles a little with minimal enough intensity for her to perceive the muscles involved in her smile in motion, which triggers an inward sense of well-being and a refreshed appearance.

„Seventy-three,“ she repeats, her mind already elsewhere. „Lenni come!“

The figure mentioned by Bertha Finow is an observation at the highest sensitive level. It takes months to comprehend it holistically, years for the resulting conclusions to be easily incorporated into everyday life and generations of experience to evaluate the influencing factors and decide how to proceed. It is an assignment and therefore a clock, calendar, barometer and pulse meter.

The dog has learned, despite the cold and although he doesn’t recognize the number seventy-three, that haste is not important these days. He sniffs at a bush that he had marked on a previous exit, scratches explosively with his hind legs next to the spot in the anthracite-colored sand of the bed where he is standing. He lifts his head, checks the road again, shivers briefly from a chill that runs through his well-proportioned, thin-haired body and follows his mistress leisurely with spindly legs up the three steps with a slight incline and wide treads into the house. Bertha and Lenni’s only residence is on Beach Road, their home.

The former imperial post office, which houses vacation apartments as well as commercial space, is spa architecture from the beginning of the twentieth century and marks the highest point of the one thousand five hundred meter long street. It was built in those years when two villages had become competing seaside resorts and Brunshaupten, which was a stone’s throw away on this side of today’s city forest, had been given a promenade, Beach Road, as a new core under the guiding principle of a seaside resort.

Through the open door, a pillow of heated air and the smell of tea with bergamot oil wafts towards the Chihuahua.

 

Hanna Glowatz stops briefly at today’s post office, opposite the Molli train station, on the street directly in front of the entrance, scurries halfway up the stairs, returns with stamps and a Sunday evening news magazine, two copies of which are available out of season, and heads towards the beach promenade for a hot drink. She turns off onto Breitscheid Road and into Baltic Avenue, the former Bulow Way. All for tourism, like the calming of the partly one-way Beach Road, which is a real traffic calming measure and also benefits the population as well as the pleasure-seekers. Hanna lives excellently with the new street name. It is unpronounceably better with the Mail Road‘ in Arend Sea village, which used to be called ‚Aaron Sea‘ behind closed doors and was merged with Brunshaupten and Fulgen in nineteen thirty-eight under the new name of Hollow Born to form a municipality and was declared a town a year later. With the rise of seaside tourism, more and more Berlin citizens of the Jewish faith were interested in spending their summer holidays in Arend Sea village. The first signs of permanent settlement beyond a vacation or retirement home and the incipient exchange of creative artists were prevented early on, before the formal aryanization by banning Jews from bathing.

She drives past two trees about seventeen meters high, a copper beech and a chestnut, which, separated by a fence, stand so close together that their branches facing each other are stunted and they seem to form a common, divided crown. The beech tree stands deep red to the east, the chestnut tree in powerful green to the west of the fence, which is a marker and not an obstacle between the two beech trees.

‚Street names tell a story when you’re not in a bird or woodland settlement,‘ Hanna thinks as a blue estate car approaches her and the driver briefly lifts his hand from the steering wheel to greet her, his expression petrified and clearly stupid. She returns the gesture with the same exalted, frosted exuberance.

„Fucking Nazi,“ she says, snorting, and only her nostrils puff out, followed by more blood flow. „Your father was already a Nazi. You would have liked it if Mail Road was still called ‚Adolf-Hitler-Road‘.“

 

She parks her vehicle illegally next to the disabled parking spaces located directly on the beach promenade on a supposed side area, hops out of her vehicle and hurries to the sea, driven by a winter stormy longing that, despite a change in content, has not become routine for her throughout her life.