One More Story by Ingo Schulze

Author:Ingo Schulze [Schulze, Ingo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-59321-4
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Not Literature, or, Epiphany on a Sunday Evening

Maybe I had had a little too much to drink. That would be the simplest explanation, of course, but any other explanation … well, what can I say.…

I can only provide you with bits and pieces of the context, but as for the heart of the matter—you’re going to think I’m loony. Either you recognize it, or …

From the outside looking in things often seem so simple.

It’s been several weeks now, anyway. It was on a Sunday. To escape the heat for one day at least, we had driven out to our dacha near Prieros. It’s always three or four degrees cooler under the pines than in Berlin. Clara and Franziska can run around naked, we can wear shorts, everybody doing their own thing, and it’s just a stone’s throw to the lake.

Around noon my mother arrived, with a big bowl of potato salad in the trunk—I’ve known that ivory-colored bowl ever since I can remember. That bowl has, so to speak, always been there. And shortly after my mother’s arrival, M. and E. showed up—two girlfriends who weren’t supposed to arrive till later in the afternoon. It was a little embarrassing to have them catch me raking up pinecones and needles between the terrace and the shed. But believe me, it’s very pleasant to walk over the moss barefoot. Besides, it would be pretty obvious if there were twigs, cones, and needles only at our place. Raking is just part of the routine for a rental property like this.

The heat meant that the electric grill was the only possible solution. The sausages and shashlik were from the supermarket, but they have very good meats. I seldom drink beer in the middle of the day, I’m a person who generally doesn’t drink much at all. But what’s grilling without beer? It was hot and I was thirsty, and the beer, left in the cellar from the time before, was cooled just right. I drank one or two bottles while I worked the grill and then one or two at the table. Everyone was drinking beer, except for the kids of course. The case was empty in no time. M. and E., agreeing as a couple, made fun of our diet potato salad, as well as the crumbly shortcake, the glaze was the only thing holding the strawberries together. But they polished off the potato salad all the same, and the sausages too. Natalia and I enjoyed the shortcake just as it was.

In the hope that the children would nap, Natalia and I set out on a tour with the double stroller, but the neighbors’ dogs started barking, and Franziska kept going “Bowwow! Bowwow!” and Clara copied her. We gave up trying to get them to nap, packed up our swim things, and headed for the lake. Natalia and I swam to the far shore, while M. and E. sunbathed and my mother sat in a tied-up boat with Clara and Franziska and sailed off to America, back and forth, back and forth.

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