there all but motionless, surrounded by countless dolls grabbed at random, smiling to herself and running her fingers over the head and face of each doll before it disappeared inside her. Now when I visited her, she hid behind her smile and her tongue, which flicked out of her mouth towards me again and again, and was not directed at me any more, but at everyone.
Maybe This Time, Maybe Now
Walter’s not coming. That would be fine with us if only our parents didn’t live in expectation of him. They constantly hope that he might just show up, that when we get together at their place again, the whole family might just be there, all of us, as if we did in fact belong together, as if we were a whole, one more time, or for the first time rather, because it hasn’t happened yet, not once.
When I visit them and suggest, as I did last time, that we all go to my sister’s house to celebrate her birthday, they’re delighted because nothing is more important to them than their children. So we agree to surprise my sister the following day, and then visit my brother, maybe even my other brother, if there’s enough time, since he lives a bit further away.
You know how much I like it when you are all together, Mother says, and tells me everything that has happened while I was gone, and we grow closer, become close even. After a while, however, she stops talking and remains quite still. Father says, Maybe it’s better if you two go and I stay at home. Maybe Walter will stop by tomorrow. And the next day we don’t go to my sister’s, since Mother doesn’t like to leave Father by himself and she doesn’t want to miss Uncle Walter, should he finally come, as she says. So they stay at home, in the house, and I stay with them. My sister comes to visit, to celebrate her birthday here, in our parents’ house, not at hers as she has wanted to do for decades.
One of them always used to stay at home. For as long as I can remember, they’ve never left the house together, and for some time now they haven’t even left separately, fearing that Walter might come and they wouldn’t be there.
If we want to see them, we have to go to their house, and we do. There are plenty of occasions: Father’s birthday, Mother’s, their anniversary, my brother’s birthday, my other brother’s birthday (the one who supposedly looks just like Uncle Walter), saints’ days, weddings and christenings, All Souls’ Day and All Hallows’ Eve, Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. Yes, there are occasions enough and we observe them. From all directions, we make our way to our parents’ house.
Besides Walter, Father has another brother and a sister who come to every occasion, along with their sons and daughters, the cousins with their children, the nephews, my great-uncle, all of them. Well, not all of them, in fact, because Uncle Walter is always missing. The more he stays away, the more my parents long for him and the more stubborn their hope that this time, today, now, he could perhaps still come after all.
But Walter doesn’t come, at least not while we are there. We don’t make up for his absence, those of us who are present, and no matter how hard we try to distract them, to make them forget about Walter, it never works. The rest of us do count for something, but not enough compared with him, since Walter’s absence makes us all invisible in our parents’ eyes and in our own. Those who are missing are noticed, but only until they come through the door, join those who are waiting and disappear into the group. It’s always the same game, who’s there and who isn’t, how many are we now, and who might then still come and who not.
The names of the others are mentioned. Yet it’s only his name everybody thinks about. However, no one asks after him, on that we silently agreed a long time ago. Not a word is said about him. But eventually our parents start talking about him and then we speak of nothing but Walter.
In the house and in the garden, we sit together and wait, pretending that we aren’t waiting. We look at each other and try to talk to each other, pretending that this is enough. But it isn’t. And how could it be, waiting as we are for another, morning, noon, evening and into the night. Whether we don’t mention his name once or whether we speak of nothing but him, we wait, at each and every family gathering and also the days and weeks in between, through the years and decades that our family has been around. And should we, just once, manage to be together without a single thought of him, a mere look from one of us is enough to bring us all back to him, and to our parents, for whom, once again, our presence is not enough.
With our constant glances at the door, never intended for the one coming through it, but searching for the one who is not to be found, we simply tell one another, but no, you’re not Walter. It took me years before I could interpret these looks and understood that they had nothing to do with me, but with the one who was missing, always the one who was missing.
That’s how it was, and it’s no different now, and none of us could say why it was the way it was, the way it had to be, the way it is now. In this sense, we have always lived with Walter. We know him and don’t know him. The youngest of us, in fact, have never laid eyes on him. And when photos from our parents’ or another relative’s childhood are passed around at the gatherings, there is never any trace of Walter.
We know him from hearsay and from our parents’ stories and expectations and their invariably disappointed hopes, which have now become ours. Should a stranger come to the door or pass by a window, which happens often enough at our family gatherings, my nieces and nephews are taken aback and look at each other, checking to see if the stranger could be Uncle Walter, nodding inquiringly or shaking their heads. No, it’s not Uncle Walter, for whatever reason. Uncle Walter looks different, Uncle Walter is taller or shorter, depending, since each of us has our own image of Walter. But in all the stories he’s good-natured, well-meaning and attentive, and interested in all of us. That’s what they tell us. But we don’t believe it, just as when I was a child, for years I didn’t believe he even existed. But there is a Walter. He has a wife called Ria. And she comes to our parents’ house. And he has a son, too. A grandson, even. Why shouldn’t he exist? He does. And he comes to visit. That’s if what our parents tell us is true, as not a soul has ever witnessed these visits. In any case, after each so-called visit, our parents’ lives are, for a time, off kilter.
He sends his best. He has a kind word for each of us. He promises to join us for the next gathering and looks forward to getting to know us, each and every one of us. That is what they say and that is what we hear. There are still a few of us who believe it, or pretend to for our parents’ sake, but this is not to say that we all appear to believe it or that it could possibly happen one day, maybe this time, maybe now.
Walter hasn’t come. Nor, on the other hand, have our parents ever gone to his house. He has never invited us children. From the beginning, Walter never encouraged visitors, and our parents always respected his wishes, or at least that’s what they say.
For a long time, I wanted to get away from the family gatherings. Whenever I sat with the others in the kitchen or in the garden and the waves of noise rose around me, I thought of Walter and how calm and peaceful it must be where he is, and of how much I, too, needed to escape. And I was impressed by his rejection of us. When I got into the car, on the way there and on the way home, I thought of nothing but avoiding the next gathering and the one after, of never turning up again, because our parents and all the others needed to understand that I could no longer comply with their wishes. I decided to stay away, but still ended up coming to the next event.
And then I did leave and stayed away. For a while I didn’t show up any more. But I soon realized I didn’t have the strength to stay away for good, because I spent the whole time thinking about them and wondering whether or not Walter had ever come.
While I stayed away from the family gatherings, not one of my relatives mentioned my absence. This bothered me, as I felt that they should notice I wasn’t there. I wanted them to miss me. After all, Father is old, and Mother isn’t getting any younger. How many more times would I see them, I wondered. And so I forced myself to return.
My parents cling to this person, and we in turn all cling to him. Walter haunts them and they let it happen, and so do we, as if we had to pay off a debt or atone for some unspecified offence.
As a child, I often asked my mother what we had done to Uncle Walter to make him stay away, because I assumed we must be at fault. I sensed how easily I could embarrass her with this question and what power I had over her at that moment, and so I asked it when we were not alone, preferably in public.
What happened with him? I asked. Why do we do this? Why do we always wait, when he never comes?
Why should anything have happened? She replied. Nothing happened, not a thing. She disappeared for a while, then returned. Walter was always that way, she said, even as a child. Always apart from the others and on his own.
