The Field by Robert Seethaler

Author:Robert Seethaler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2021-08-10T12:50:46+00:00

Sophie Breyer

Idiots.

Heribert Kraus

Early morning. The road is wet. Drops are falling from the trees; underneath them it already smells of autumn. The light, as if someone had poured it over the roofs. Now it’s running down them, down chimneys, gutters, walls, like viscous gold. The pigeons’ cooing and fluttering sounds unfamiliar. It’s too early to think clearly. Don’t think, keep pedalling, it’s a long round! And your legs are still stiff. It’s cold. The bike is heavy. Steel – has to withstand a lot. Full bags. And cobbles everywhere. An old town. Old houses. Old streets. Good for the townscape, bad for postmen. Keep pedalling, it’ll get easier soon. It’s just the beginning that’s hard. The beginning and the end.

Turning off Leinestrasse into Thomasstrasse, on into the day. Windows flash. The sky so bright it hurts your eyes. Across Kernerplatz, past the oldest tree. The hollow trunk, just wide enough for three children to hide in. The dahlias. The grass. The hole in the ground. A fox, perhaps. Probably nothing left to eat out there in the fields. The nursery school. Wonky animal drawings on the wall. Giraffe. Elephant. Tiger. The hippopotamus is squinting; dew glitters on the bars of the swing. A cap on the grass like a yellow flower.

Karolinenstrasse. Kornweg. Brückenstrasse. The delivery starts at number three. There’s no numbers one and two. No one knows why.

And how’s the little girl? asks Frau Haller, at the fence. Wizened face, but always friendly. Plucks at her dressing gown. Always the same dressing gown, never a different one. Over the years I’ve watched it fade, its rich, bright red dwindling to pallid, salmony pink. And what do the doctors say? No one ever wishes for such a thing, of course. But what can you do? Mine left long ago. Womb, home, everything, that’s just the way it is. But yours is still small. It must be hard. Oh – heading off already? By all means. Have a nice day. See you tomorrow. See you tomorrow!

Brückenstrasse is one of the best. All old people, not much post. The air is already warm. The road stretches ahead in the sun; tarred only recently, and it split again immediately afterwards. Dark cracks. Holes. Troughs. The town has no money. No one has money; but at least it smells of coffee. Of bread and sausage and honey and chocolate. Of bacon and fat-­fried eggs. Of toilet odours and soap suds. Through the open windows, past the laundry, houses exhale the remnants of the night. Shaken-­out dreams lie in the grass below. Who said that? You? Well, who’d have thought. In the distance, Frau Heller is still standing at the garden fence, a salmon-­pink blob, waving.

Conversations are to be avoided at all costs. Other people’s loneliness is not yours. That’s what Walther used to say. Forty-­seven years in the postal service and only off sick once. Renal colic. Two days in bed with compresses and thistle tea, then back on his bike again. Later, he showed the youngsters the rounds.

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