Visitation

THE GARDENER

ON THE WEEKENDS in winter when they come out to ice-skate, the subtenants see the footsteps of the gardener in the snow, they start at the guest room and lead sometimes here, sometimes there, crisscrossing the two upper meadows and also passing through the front garden and out the gate, but the prints make clear that none of these paths has been followed more than once. When they run into the gardener, which seldom happens, they ask if he needs something they can bring him next time they come — fresh bread from the baker in the village, eggs, noodles, fruit or something to drink. But the gardener always declines, he shakes his head and goes on his way, a cold cigar stump in his mouth. In the village they say that after the fall of the Berlin Wall the subtenants sold the genuine Meissen porcelain for cheap to buyers from the West. In the village, they say that the gardener has, for some time now, eaten nothing but snow.

When the mistress of the house arrives from Berlin to clear everything out for the investor, the gardener is not there. In his room, the table, chair and bed are as always, a few pieces of clothing have been tossed over hooks, and his rubber boots still stand in one corner, but the gardener himself is not there. The subtenants don’t know what to say when asked his whereabouts, they haven’t run into him for some time either; recently he’s been having more and more trouble walking, particularly downhill. Could something have happened to him? No, the subtenants respond, they don’t think so. Together with the mistress of the house and her friend from the village, they search the property from top to bottom looking for him, finally even checking along the shoreline as well. In any case, it’s obvious he is nowhere in the house.

The gardener is never seen again, and so two months later the mistress of the house and her father finally consent when the investor urges them once more to build a wall separating the gardener’s damp room from the main house to at last put a stop to the dry rot that has established itself there and begun to spread.