My Soul Twin by Nino Haratischvili

Author:Nino Haratischvili
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC019000, FIC102000, FIC045000, FIC008000, FIC027000
Publisher: Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Published: 2022-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

14

Mark was back. We didn’t talk to each other. I was present, fulfilled my duties, didn’t complain, went on being Theo’s mother, his scandalous mother.

We celebrated Theo’s seventh birthday and had the party at his grandparents’ in Blankenese, where the children could listen to loud music and romp undisturbed, eat cake, brandish water pistols and flood the garden.

I sat in the corner of the garden at a long table laden with sweet drinks and cakes. Mark was chatting to some of the other fathers and attending to the barbecue. I didn’t make a particular effort to talk to anyone. The sun was shining. The day had turned warm, and I let the individual sunbeams dance along my arms, like a juggler. I observed my fingers, which looked so pale, bony, bare and ineffectual. I looked at my wedding ring and started twisting it; I pulled it up slightly, tried to take it off, then pushed it down again. With or without a ring, I had failed.

*

Abi had slapped me, then started to sob as I packed my things. Xerxes, frightened, had crept into a corner and watched with bewildered eyes as his world was split in two. I hadn’t found another apartment; it was a hot summer, and the university vacation had just begun, so I’d decided to spend the next few weeks with Tulia until I had something lined up.

I spent the days in Niendorf in a hammock Tulia and I had strung up, staring at the sky. In the evening I went to the beach or wrote articles for the university magazine. I smoked, and listened to old records in the basement. Sometimes I helped Tulia with the boat hire business; we spent the days alongside each other in silence, asking no questions. From time to time she would make her famous apple cake and invite some cackling old ladies over, and I would get to serve them brandy and chauffeur them home. I hadn’t told anyone where I was, and I hardly left the house or garden.

My mourning was not excessive, not bloody. It was tender, almost meek, patient even, and wonderfully assuaged by Tulia’s liqueurs.

One Sunday evening — I had been at the beach, reading and making notes — I got back to the house and realised that something was different. At first I thought Papa had come to visit, but there was no sign of his car. The gate was open, and the old children’s swing under the treehouse was swaying back and forth as if someone had brought it back to life.

I stood still and listened. Tulia was chattering excitedly, with a happy rasp in her voice, and I knew that he had come.

I ran inside and saw Ivo sitting at the table, his cheeks flushed, eating Tulia’s soup. His big rucksack and his shoes stood in the hall.

I wasn’t prepared for his visit, and it made me rather uncomfortable, because I didn’t know what Tulia had written to him, whether he knew that I had left Hamburg.

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