The Beech Forest by Marlis Wesseler

Author:Marlis Wesseler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thistledown Press
Published: 2024-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

ten

She drives home carefully, consciously noting oncoming traffic and the angle of the sun on her windshield. Once, her mother-in-law, late one night over brandy in a rare moment of serious recollection, talked about the time just after the war. A teenager separated from her parents and desperate to escape Russian soldiers occupying Berlin, Renata had walked almost one hundred kilometres in one go to her home town.

“How could you keep on walking all that distance without sleep?” Lisa asked her.

“Terror,” Renata said. She had reached her parents’ house to find her mother alone. The Soviets were there too, and her father had been arrested, the Russians now using a recently vacated concentration camp for their German prisoners.

Lisa’s own parents have been dead for well over a decade now, her dad fourteen years ago and her mom a couple of years later, but it doesn’t seem that long ago. She wants her mother. A particular memory of them often comes to her, an image cast in nostalgia and the soft light of the floor lamp in their living room, of her mother sitting on the couch between her husband and son-in-law looking at an old photo album of baby pictures. “Lisa,” she said, turning to Gerhardt, “she had such a kissable neck.”

Gerhardt said, “She still does,” and her dad laughed. The three of them turned to look at her, teasing. Such a small memory, but it has the weight of an icon; the moment defines something about her. I was gently raised. She wonders how she will deal with the rest of Ben Meisner’s story and feels sick at the prospect of more knowledge.

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