The German Lesson by Siegfried Lenz

Author:Siegfried Lenz [Lenz, Siegfried]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780811209823
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2013-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

11 Invisible Pictures

Well, so it’s here, where Hilke and I caught our plaice, that it’s supposed to have started: life and all the rest of it. Did you ever hear such a thing? In these flats, here in this expanse of mud—grey wilderness, hollowed and dotted by shallow puddles, here the emergence of life is supposed to have begun. One fine day everything that could breathe arose from the bottom of the sea, moved across the amphibious belt of the beach, washed off the original slime, lit a fire and made coffee. Or at least that’s what’s supposed to have happened, according to Per Arne Schessel, the writer and explorer of this homeland of ours, that’s what he wrote, my grandfather, that old hermit-crab.

Be that as it may, there we were, on those flats, out to catch our plaice, walking on the slippery bottom of the sea, a fair distance out from the peninsula. The sea-birds went fishing with us. Hilke had her dress hitched up and gathered in front of her belly, her legs were caked with mud up to her knees, the hem of her petticoat was black with moisture. The way the sea-birds fish is by pulling their open beaks through the water of the pools, plucking and gulping. The sharply incised runnels in the sand branch out towards the open sea; at low tide this is good fishing-ground. Mostly we walked hand in hand right into one of those grey pools or to the edge of a flat runnel and simply let our feet sink into the mud, fumbling, groping with our toes. Supporting each other, we pulled our legs up, dragging our feet systematically through the mud and the slime, always alert, waiting for something to move under our soles. Whenever we stepped on some kind of flat fish, a flounder or turbot or, much more rarely, a sole, the creature began to jerk and twitch and wriggle, and Hilke would yell and squeak whenever it was she who had found the fish by stepping on it. I know of no one as untiring in catching flat fish by treading them down into the mud as my sister Hilke. Although she was very ticklish and jumped for fright every time it happened, it was very rare for a fish to escape from under her foot. She would keep her foot firmly on it until I got hold of it and pulled it out.

Sometimes she would sink into the mud right up to her thighs and then she would pull her dress up to her chest. And then again she would slide over a layer of smooth clay as over ice. The gurgling and gulping in the cool mud, when bubbles burst and when she sank in softly and irresistibly, gave her a lot of pleasure. She never forgot to observe the current in the runnels. Where the wavy, rippling ground of the flats grew harder she would hop on one foot, every time alighting on the threadlike droppings of the sand worms.

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