Read Online The Taste of Apple Seeds by Katharina Hagena - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Katharina Hagena
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tonight?”
“Maybe. For tonight. Will you come again tomorrow evening?”
“No, there’s a council meeting I can’t miss.”
“Tomorrow afternoon for a cup of coffee?”
“I’d love to.”
“Thanks for the soup. And the milk. And for the house, the garden . . .”
“Not at all. Please, Iris, you know that it’s me who needs to thank you and to apologize.”
“You’ve absolutely no need to apologize to me. What for? For having loved my grandmother till the day she died, or for the death of my great-aunt Anna? Honestly.”
“No, I don’t have to apologize to you for that,” he said, giving me a warm smile. I could see exactly why my great-aunt Anna had fallen for him. “I only need to apologize because no one in your family knew that I had a spare key, not even your aunt Inga. She thought all I did was stroll around outside the house from time to time, taking a quick look.” He felt in his trouser pocket and for the second time a huge brass front-door key was put in my hand. It seemed as if Herr Lexow had a spare key to many things, I thought as I placed the warmed metal on the kitchen table.
I saw the old teacher and my grandmother’s lover to the door. “Coffee tomorrow, then?”
He waved briefly and went down the front steps somewhat awkwardly, disappearing behind the roses as he turned to the right, toward his bicycle, which he had left on the drive. I could hear the kickstand of his bike dragging across the flagstones and shortly afterward the soft humming of his dynamo as he cycled out onto the pavement and past the hedge. Then I pulled off my grandfather’s socks, took the key from the hook, and went outside to close the gate.
In the dark I walked over to the garden, where Bertha’s ghost appeared in certain corners. Her garden was like those grotesque woolen figures my mother had kept in her wardrobe: gaping holes, rampant undergrowth, and somewhere the hint of a pattern.
Anna loved Boskoop, Bertha Cox’s Orange.
What did Bertha want to tell my mother back then? What did she remember and what things did she allow to become forgotten? What’s forgotten never vanishes without trace; it always, secretly, draws attention to itself and its hiding place. The girl’s kiss tasted of Boskoop, Herr Lexow said.
When, a month after the miracle of the summertime apple blossom, Bertha ran weeping through the garden, she saw that the red currants had turned white. The black ones had remained black. All the other currants now had the greenish gray-white of ash. That year there were many tears and particularly good currant jelly.
Chapter V
I WOKE IN THE NIGHT, FREEZING . I had left both windows and doors in Christa’s room open, and now the nighttime breeze had chilled the air. I pulled the blanket over my head and thought of my mother. She loved the cold. In Baden the summers were so hot that not only did she have every reason to own an air-conditioning unit, but she turned it up full, took all her drinks with ice, and every few hours went to the chest freezer in the cellar to fetch herself a small glass bowl of vanilla ice cream.
But when it was winter the gravel pits, quarry ponds, canals, and channels of the old Rhine froze more quickly there than the lakes up here in the rain-soaked north German lowlands.
And then she went ice-skating.
She ice-skated like no one else; she wasn’t particularly graceful, she didn’t dance, no, she flew, she ran, she burned up the ice. My grandfather had bought her a pair of white skates when she was young. He was proud of his own skating skills, which were limited to a brisk forward movement and one that weaved backward. He could also make big circles by crossing his outer leg over his inner one. But he hadn’t taught his daughter Christa all the things she did on the ice. She cut broad figures of eight by putting her hands on her hips and leaning into the curves. She would take a run-up and leap wildly into the air five or seven times with her knees
“Maybe. For tonight. Will you come again tomorrow evening?”
“No, there’s a council meeting I can’t miss.”
“Tomorrow afternoon for a cup of coffee?”
“I’d love to.”
“Thanks for the soup. And the milk. And for the house, the garden . . .”
“Not at all. Please, Iris, you know that it’s me who needs to thank you and to apologize.”
“You’ve absolutely no need to apologize to me. What for? For having loved my grandmother till the day she died, or for the death of my great-aunt Anna? Honestly.”
“No, I don’t have to apologize to you for that,” he said, giving me a warm smile. I could see exactly why my great-aunt Anna had fallen for him. “I only need to apologize because no one in your family knew that I had a spare key, not even your aunt Inga. She thought all I did was stroll around outside the house from time to time, taking a quick look.” He felt in his trouser pocket and for the second time a huge brass front-door key was put in my hand. It seemed as if Herr Lexow had a spare key to many things, I thought as I placed the warmed metal on the kitchen table.
I saw the old teacher and my grandmother’s lover to the door. “Coffee tomorrow, then?”
He waved briefly and went down the front steps somewhat awkwardly, disappearing behind the roses as he turned to the right, toward his bicycle, which he had left on the drive. I could hear the kickstand of his bike dragging across the flagstones and shortly afterward the soft humming of his dynamo as he cycled out onto the pavement and past the hedge. Then I pulled off my grandfather’s socks, took the key from the hook, and went outside to close the gate.
In the dark I walked over to the garden, where Bertha’s ghost appeared in certain corners. Her garden was like those grotesque woolen figures my mother had kept in her wardrobe: gaping holes, rampant undergrowth, and somewhere the hint of a pattern.
Anna loved Boskoop, Bertha Cox’s Orange.
What did Bertha want to tell my mother back then? What did she remember and what things did she allow to become forgotten? What’s forgotten never vanishes without trace; it always, secretly, draws attention to itself and its hiding place. The girl’s kiss tasted of Boskoop, Herr Lexow said.
When, a month after the miracle of the summertime apple blossom, Bertha ran weeping through the garden, she saw that the red currants had turned white. The black ones had remained black. All the other currants now had the greenish gray-white of ash. That year there were many tears and particularly good currant jelly.
Chapter V
I WOKE IN THE NIGHT, FREEZING . I had left both windows and doors in Christa’s room open, and now the nighttime breeze had chilled the air. I pulled the blanket over my head and thought of my mother. She loved the cold. In Baden the summers were so hot that not only did she have every reason to own an air-conditioning unit, but she turned it up full, took all her drinks with ice, and every few hours went to the chest freezer in the cellar to fetch herself a small glass bowl of vanilla ice cream.
But when it was winter the gravel pits, quarry ponds, canals, and channels of the old Rhine froze more quickly there than the lakes up here in the rain-soaked north German lowlands.
And then she went ice-skating.
She ice-skated like no one else; she wasn’t particularly graceful, she didn’t dance, no, she flew, she ran, she burned up the ice. My grandfather had bought her a pair of white skates when she was young. He was proud of his own skating skills, which were limited to a brisk forward movement and one that weaved backward. He could also make big circles by crossing his outer leg over his inner one. But he hadn’t taught his daughter Christa all the things she did on the ice. She cut broad figures of eight by putting her hands on her hips and leaning into the curves. She would take a run-up and leap wildly into the air five or seven times with her knees
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