In Times of Fading Light

laughter every time, as if it were the wittiest remark they’d ever heard.

Wilhelm had been hard of hearing for some time. He was also half blind. He did nothing but sit in his wing chair, a skeleton with a mustache, but when he raised his hand and prepared to say something, everyone fell silent and waited patiently for him to utter a few croaking sounds, which all present then eagerly interpreted. Every year he was awarded some kind of medal. Every year a speech of some kind was made. Every year the same bad cognac was served in colored aluminum goblets. And every year, or so it seemed to Irina, Wilhelm was surrounded by even more sycophants; they increased and multiplied, a kind of dwarfish race, all of them small men whom Irina couldn’t tell apart, in greasy gray suits, laughing all the time and speaking a language that Irina really, with the best will in the world, couldn’t understand. If she closed her eyes she already knew how she would feel at the end of this day, she could sense her cheeks stiffening with all those false smiles, could smell the mayonnaise rising to her nostrils after, out of sheer boredom, she had tried the cold buffet, could taste the aluminum flavor of the cognac served in those colored goblets.

She didn’t like entering her in-laws’ house anyway; the mere thought of it was unwelcome to her. She hated the dark, heavy furniture, the doors, the carpets. Everything in that house was dark and heavy. Everything reminded her of past suffering. Even after thirty-three years she hadn’t forgotten what it was like to clean out the cracks in the wooden panels of the cloakroom alcove in the hall. How she had to make porridge for Wilhelm: had to stand on the stairs waiting to hear him come out of the bathroom, and then—quick!—into the kitchen to stir the oats so that they wouldn’t be glutinous when they were served… never in her life had she been so helpless, she hadn’t mastered the language, she was like a deaf-mute desperately trying to take her guidelines from other people’s glances and gestures.

And how about Kurt?

While she, with the child clinging to her skirt, stood in the laundry room ironing Wilhelm’s shirts, Kurt had been sitting on the sofa with Charlotte, stuffing his face with grapes. That was how about Kurt. With that Frau Stiller beside him.

Oh, sorry. That Dr. Stiller.

She heard Kurt going into the living room, putting something down on the table, going back into the kitchen. It was coming up to eight thirty. She had to fetch the flowers by ten. Then she must pay a quick visit to the Russian Store to collect the Belomorkanal cigarettes. And if Alexander turned up at lunchtime she wanted to cook pelmeni.

But Kurt insisted on her staying in bed until he put his head around the door and, in a childlike voice, called her to breakfast. And Irina humored him. Why?

She looked at herself in the big oval mirror that hung at an angle above her over the head of the bed… was it something to do with the light? Or the fact that you always saw yourself standing on your head in that damn mirror? We could take the mirror down, thought Irina, and remembered at the same moment that this idea had occurred to her quite often before; always on Sundays when Kurt was making breakfast and she lay here studying herself in the mirror.

The worst of it was that she was beginning to see her mother’s features in her own face. It was discouraging. Yes, she could still look pretty good. Horst Mahlich, with his doggy eyes, would pay her his usual ardent compliments today, and even that eternally grinning new district secretary, a sexless creature who seemed to be made of plastic rather than flesh and blood—unlike his predecessor, who admittedly had been short and fat but was a man all the same, and could even bring himself to kiss a lady’s hand—even that new district secretary would bow once more than was necessary on greeting her, and there would be, if not admiration, then something like awkwardness in his glance as it slid just past her.

But none of that altered the fact that old age was perceptibly, irrevocably on its way, and ever since her mother had been living in their house (Irina had brought her here from Russia thirteen years ago in circumstances of unimaginable bureaucratic difficulty), ever since then she’d had the image of where that way was leading before her daily. Of course she’d always known that you grow old. But her mother’s presence made her constantly aware of the uselessness of her struggle against aging, it preyed on her mind, started heretical ideas going around in her head, whispered temptingly that one might as well give up—give up as a woman. Why bother with support stockings and gum treatments, hairpieces and beauty creams, why all the plucking, the application of concealer? To impress assorted boring old men with the hairstyles of functionaries? To have the petty annual pleasure of triumphing yet again over Frau Stiller, sorry, Dr. Stiller, whose figure was increasingly coming to resemble a sack of potatoes, and whose face was getting more and more flushed as the result of her high blood pressure?

The telephone rang.

Once again Kurt’s footsteps made the floorboards creak as he crossed those six meters of the living room. Past the sofa where you could lounge at your leisure. Right past the bedroom door, and then, at last, his voice.

“Yes, Mutti?”

Astonishing, thought Irina, how friendly, how patient Kurt was with Charlotte.

“No, Mutti,” said Kurt. “It’s eight thirty. If you fixed for him to arrive at eleven, then Alexander will be here in two and a half hours.”

At bottom, in the depths of her heart, it offended Irina. Indeed, she took it as an enduring, severe injustice; it was as if, to this day, Kurt refused to admit what Charlotte had done to her in the past.

“Mutti, how am I to know when you and Alexander fixed that he’d be here?” said Kurt.

Charlotte had treated her like dirt. Like a servant. Charlotte, thought Irina, would really have liked to send her right back to her Russian village—and marry Kurt off to Dr. Stiller.

She heard Kurt make his way back to the kitchen. Good heavens, how long did it take the man to unwrap a piece of cheese and put out two plates? And then he thought he was helping with the housework. He did more damage than his help was worth. Once he had forgotten to put the jug under the coffee machine. Another time there were raw eggs for breakfast—he had boiled the water for exactly three and a half minutes, without putting any eggs into it!

The only ray of light today was that Sasha would be here for lunch. That, thought Irina as she threw back the covers to do a few yoga exercises (or what she thought were yoga exercises), that was the only good thing about this birthday party.

For like everyone else, Sasha had his “special job”—Charlotte loved to hand out “special jobs” to everyone. Someone even had to be responsible for taking the gift wrapping off the flowers, and someone else responsible for wiping down the Vita Cola bottles, which were always sticky because of the malfunctioning soda-stream machine. Sasha was responsible for extending the extra leaves of the extending table. For some reason Charlotte had taken it into her head that only Sasha was capable of extending the extending table. Idiotic, but Irina was careful not to disabuse anyone of this mistake. Because when Sasha, his presence commanded for eleven, had finished extending the extending table, it wasn’t worth his while to go back to Berlin, and as a result he usually spent the time until the beginning of the birthday party in the Fuchsbau house, and then they would eat pelmeni together as they did every year. Pelmeni with sour cream and mustard, the way Sasha liked them.

Just so long as Catrin didn’t come with him.

She had nothing against Catrin with a “C” and without an “h” (and with the emphasis on the second syllable: Catreen), apart from the fact that she didn’t see why Sasha had felt he had to move straight in with this woman. He always moved straight in with women, instead of waiting to get to know them a bit first. Waiting to see if it worked out. And he could have been so comfortable living here; Irina had extended the attic floor on purpose to make a self-contained apartment, very practical, with its own bathroom.

No, she had nothing against Catrin, thought Irina, managing a reasonably good shoulder stand, although to be honest what Sasha saw in the woman was a mystery to her… none of her business, of course. And she wasn’t going to say a word about it. All the same, she did wonder why such a good-looking, intelligent young man couldn’t find a better woman. Allegedly, Catrin was an actress. Did he really not see that she was ugly? Unattractive knees, no waist, no bum. And a chin, to be honest, like a construction worker’s… she did have lovely eyes, yes, you had to give her that. Although on the other hand, that fluttering glance, the restlessness in her eyes when you talked to her… Irina never felt that she was getting really close to Catrin. The woman always seemed to be somewhere else, always thinking about something else—thinking feverishly about it—when she smiled at you there was always something else going on in her head.