Bernhard Schlink by Homecoming (v5)

Author:Homecoming (v5)
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780307377159
Publisher: a cognizant original v5 release october 08 2010
Published: 2008-01-08T05:00:00+00:00

17

WE COULD HAVE MADE the trip home in a day, but I wanted to stop off in the village where my grandparents had lived. I wanted to see their house again, see the pine trees, the apple tree, the bushes, the field, the garden; I wanted to sit on the shore, gaze out at the water and feed the swans and ducks; I wanted to hear whether the stations still signaled the departure of a train to each other by ringing a bell; I wanted to show Mother the world Father had grown up in. I may also have wanted to use the occasion to shake her up a little, open her up, break down her reserve. In any case, I refrained from telling her where we were until we had unpacked and showered and were walking along the lake before dinner.

“Do you think I didn't notice the route you'd taken?” Her eyes were all scorn and provocation.

I did not reply. We came to a small park at the confluence of the village pond and the lake. I went to the water's edge and took out a bag of stale bread I had collected, and just as in the old days the birds paddled up before I could throw out the first crumbs, before I had even broken the crusts into crumbs; just as in the old days there was a great to-do when I did toss them in, the faster, stronger birds snapping them up before the slower, weaker ones could get at them, and I did my best to restore justice by aiming carefully.

Mother laughed when she caught on to what I was doing. “So you want to teach the ducks justice, do you?”

“Grandfather made fun of me too. ‘That's the way nature is,’ he would say. ‘The strong get more than the weak, the fast more than the slow.’ But I'm not nature.”

Mother held out her hand, I gave her a piece of dry bread, and she crumbled it up and threw it in the direction of the swans, two white parents and five light-brown offspring. “Only because I prefer swans to ducks.”

“Weren't you ever curious about where Father grew up?”

She held out her open hand again and threw the swans more crumbs. “I know what's coming now. What was Father like anyway? How did you meet, fall in love, get married? When did he leave? How did he die?” She shook her head. “Why do you think I haven't told you? I don't like to talk about it. I hate to talk about it.”

By the end she was in such a frenzy I couldn't say a word. I knew her frenzies: I had to be prepared for the worst: insults, shouts, even violence. Only the disciplinary structure of the words and sentences kept her from going off the deep end. As a child I was sometimes spanked, not so hard it really hurt but enough to throw me off balance. She hit me as if she wanted to push me away, get rid of me.

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