The Room

8

J heads straight for Bad Nauheim, dropping my mother off at her then-apartment. After that, he drives directly to Uhlandstrasse, hurriedly eats the early dinner that is waiting there for him, and takes his mother to the hairdresser’s. Then he drives quickly to Schade & Füllgrabe and buys a vast quantity of preserving sugar which he brings back to Uhlandstrasse, where, or so it seems to him, there’s a veritable warehouse of fruit waiting to be preserved in the cellar. The more his mother preserves, the more fruit there seems to be. The majority of it comes from the company grounds. Pears, plums, squash, and above all apples. And now all of a sudden it’s six in the evening and everything has been done, and my uncle, having almost given up all hope (and having unleashed a thousand blood baths in his mind) sets off at last from Uhlandstrasse to Forsthaus Winterstein.

First he drives through the town, and after just a few metres he sees the sign for an inn, perhaps one that he, the Boll-heir, hasn’t shown himself in for a while. He could pop in, parking the car in a prestigious manner first, then appear in the doorway so that everyone will look up, recognise him at once and be pleased. A guest of his standing! But then he sees the sign for another inn, and then a third, for there are inns and bars everywhere in Bad Nauheim because of the numerous spa guests. So my uncle decides to drive up to the forest after all; he wants to be amongst the robins, which start to sing shortly before dusk. As dusk falls, the wild animals begin to venture out of their dens. He can walk along the forest path in sturdy shoes with a forest-appropriate jacket, almost like the hunters. This makes J feel orderly and proper. So it turns out he does have a uniform after all, a forest uniform. He always has the cumbersome old binoculars with him when he comes here. There in the forest it’s as though his eyes were protruding for sheer joy, and then the old binoculars protruding in turn. My uncle was one of those people who manage to effortlessly lure squirrels to eat from their bare hands; he must have had some kind of special technique. To start with I was astounded, because never in a million years would I have thought that he could manage such a feat, instead believing that the only result of him laying a nut in his flat, outstretched palm would be that all the squirrels flee from him in shock and create a no-go zone, so to speak, of at least fifty metres around him, all the squirrels in the Bad Nauheim forest and the spa parklands, and all the wildlife in Wetterau for that matter. But they came to my uncle willingly, despite the fact that he looked so awful, with his lower jaw jutting out and, as the years passed, increasingly hunch-backed as he stood there waiting for the squirrels.

He drives up the main road and veers off through the narrow lanes of the old town, and if we can agree on the fact that it’s the beginning of autumn in the year of the moon landing on this day in the life of my uncle J, then he encounters a trailer in front of him in Keltergasse and can’t get past it. The trailer is full of apples, and it’s in the process of being backed in to the courtyard. On the tractor sits a man, a boy stands alongside it, and in front there is a woman guiding the driver backwards. Careful, calls the man. J knows him, of course, his name is Karl Maiwald, the boy is his son Martin, and the woman is Karl’s wife Christine. J stops the car and gets out to watch them bring the trailer into the yard, they still need to make it around the corner. The Maiwald family has a daughter too, called Julia, but she is nowhere to be seen. Before they are even a third of the way around the corner, the rear plank of the trailer swings open and some of the apples fall out. Maiwald brakes, pulls on the handbrake and slowly climbs down from the tractor. Then he leans against the trailer and asks who the last person to secure the hatch was. Your son, calls the wife. Meanwhile, some of the apples start to roll down Keltergasse, directly towards my uncle. The apples, calls J, and he begins to pick some of them up. But not many of them roll down the street, most stay in the yard. Julia Maiwald appears briefly at the yard gate, then immediately disappears again. A laugh and a drawn-out exclamation of ay-ay-ay rings out from the courtyard.

J goes up to Maiwald and says, Here, the apples.

So Martin secured the load, says Maiwald, throwing the apples from J’s hand back onto the trailer.

J now sees that around a third of the load is lying on the ground by the gate, that Julia Maiwald is standing behind the load and that Gerd Bornträger is there in the Maiwald’s yard too, sitting on a bench with an empty jerry can in his hand.

Hey there J, calls Bornträger, it looks like everyone’s gathering around the apples again!

The apple-pressing has been taking place in the Maiwald’s yard for some days now, and Bornträger, who happens to live in the old town, has come to fetch some cider. During the apple-pressing season, the Maiwald’s yard becomes a mecca for the whole neighbourhood, and even in the Apollo year the people come with their bottles and jerry cans, just like always. While Bornträger remains seated (putting his jerry can down next to him on the ground), Christine fetches some baskets and Martin the pitchfork. They shovel the apples into the baskets, then empty the baskets into the now-secured trailer. Julia picks them by hand, apple by apple, and Bornträger watches her (as does J).

If you want sweet ones, says Maiwald to J (seeming not to notice that J is staring at his daughter), then we pressed yesterday. Not today, today we were picking.

No, says J, explaining that he’s on his way to Forsthaus Winterstein and just happened to pass by, that he wants to go to the Forsthaus because the hunt was there this week, a really big hunt up in the forest, all the way to Mörlen, the biggest hunt there’s been in a long time.

And while the Maiwald family occupies itself with the apples which are lying around on the ground, green and yellow and predominantly red, the guests in the courtyard look on. Julia is on her knees now and picking apples up from under the trailer, one hand on the ground to support herself and the other collecting, a basket next to her. So now J is standing there in the yard, the Maiwald yard, and he’s sure to be transfixed by the tractor or at least the apple press at the back of the yard, which is ready for action but won’t be used today, and for sure he would have loved to find out how the press works and how it’s operated and which pump gets used to pump down into the cellar and so on and so on, but now Julia is on her knees collecting apples, and everything around J sinks into nothingness, a blackness against which just one thing stands out in sharp relief: Julia on her knees, harvesting apples.

How old are you now anyway? asks Bornträger, standing up from the bench.

Fifteen, Julia calls out.

Fifteen, repeats Bornträger, leaning against the wall of the barn which is just behind the bench.

Julia’s fifteen now, that’s right, says Maiwald, and in two weeks’ time she’ll be sixteen. Her birthday always comes just after the apples.

Just after the apples, repeats Bornträger as he watches Julia beneath the trailer, her deft movements no longer child-like, already very much those of a young woman.

Julia, says Maiwald, is our apple girl.

Apple girl, repeats Bornträger. J stands behind Julia, his eyes sticking out of his head.

And now she stands up again and smiles. She smiles at him or Bornträger, or simply smiles out into the world, and my uncle falls into a transfixed state, one which can only pass when Julia disappears from the scene. But she clearly has no plans to do so. She lifts the basket from the ground, J standing next to her, and looks straight at him, or perhaps she looks straight though him. And now she scrambles around the trailer again and around my uncle’s feet, to pick up one or two more of the scattered apples, and all the while my uncle watches her as if he was alone in the world. Bornträger, over by the barn wall, licks his lips. The apples are all back in the trailer now, so it can be driven on. Maiwald climbs up onto the tractor and moves it off the road, driving the trailer into the yard and over to the press. The apples will be pressed tomorrow. Then Maiwald releases the trailer and drives the tractor out of the yard, to park it. His wife Christine has gone into the house now to wash her hands. Martin has gone too. Now only my uncle, Bornträger and Julia remain in the yard. She stands by the trailer and looks at the apples.

Those are very fine apples, says Bornträger, watching Julia. Were they all harvested today?

Yes, all of them, says Julia.

Then every one of the apples was held by you or your family?

Yes, every last one, says Julia.

Julia, her mother calls from inside, come in and wash your hands.

Yes, Mother, says Julia.

But now Bornträger has moved closer and is standing next to Julia by the trailer.

So you were picking apples for a really long time today, he says, do you enjoy it?

I don’t know, says Julia.

Can I touch them some time?

Julia nods hesitantly.

Will you give me an apple?

Julia nods again, still hesitant.

Come and wash your hands now, Julia, her mother calls.

Yes, in a moment, says Julia.

Look, they’re such beautiful apples, says Bornträger as he grabs them, one eye on the yard to see if Maiwald is coming back.

Julia stares straight ahead, into one of the corners of the yard. J stands there and marvels once more at what other people are capable of. Perhaps, in a moment, Bornträger will ask him if he wants to touch the apples too, in which case J would probably do it, with both hands, or perhaps they would suddenly leap on the girl and ravage her from top to bottom in the matter of a mere second, but now her mother is calling for the third time, Come in right this minute!

I should go in, says Julia, gazing into the aforementioned corner of the yard, then quietly directs the retort idiot at Bornträger and goes in to wash her hands.

Now Maiwald comes back into the yard, and Bornträger sits there happy and content, and perhaps with a certain degree of excitement, on the bench next to the jerry can; nothing has happened, everything is fine, and Maiwald talks for a while longer with Bornträger and my uncle about the time of year, the weather, the apples, the harvest, and in the end Bornträger takes three litres of yesterday’s sweet cider with him, and my uncle gets back into his Variant, and Christine Maiwald stands with her husband in the courtyard and says, Those repellent beasts, they only come because of Julia, but it’s not like we can lock her away inside.

Maiwald: Ay, ay, I guess she’s just at that age.