Visitation

THE GARDENER

WHEN THE FIRST VACATION homes are built on the shores of the lake, many of them with thatched roofs, the gardener helps cut the reeds for the roofs as soon as the lake freezes over, and here too he proves unusually deft, the frozen stems crack like glass before him, he manipulates the board used to transport the stalks so skillfully that the roofer finds it difficult to believe he has never before helped out during the reed harvest. With great vigor he pounds the stalks across his left knee without ever growing weary, the short pieces and bits of grass fall to the ground straightaway, then he lays the neat bundles off to the side.

The gardener doesn’t speak much, and he’s never been heard to say anything at all about events in the village, whether someone has drowned in the lake, a smallholder has secretly changed the position of a border stone, or Schmeling has knocked out the American boxer Louis in the twelfth round. That’s our Schmeling, the roofer says from his perch high up on the thatching stool down to where the gardener is handing him the bundles of reeds, our Schmeling going up against the Brown Bomber, that was something, or don’t you have a radio? The gardener shakes his head. The house upon whose roof the roofer is currently sitting belongs to Schmeling. I put the roof on the Thorak place too, the roofer told the gardener when they were first beginning to work together, perhaps in the hope of impressing the gardener, who was known for being taciturn, and moving him to speak, but probably the gardener didn’t even know who Thorak was, and in any case his only response had been a silent nod.

Many in the village find the gardener’s silence unsettling, they declare him cold, call the expression in his eyes fishy, suspect his high forehead of harboring traces of madness. Some, on the other hand, point out that while his communications with others are kept to a minimum, when he thinks he is alone in a garden or field, they’ve clearly seen him moving his lips constantly as he hoes, digs, weeds and prunes or waters plants — in other words, he prefers talking with vegetables. No one is admitted into his hut, and children who peek through the window when he isn’t home see only a table, chair, bed and a few items of clothing that have been tossed over hooks. So the hut, too, is silent, just like its owner, and as is always the case with silences, this might indicate that it is hiding a secret, or else simply that it is empty through and through.

When the thatch roof on the house that a Berlin architect is having built for himself and his wife on Klara Wurrach’s land is already almost finished — the roofer and the gardener are just taking a break before they incorporate the last bundles of reeds into the roof — the householder-to-be joins them and asks the two villagers whether they might know someone in the area who could help transform the woods into a garden. And as is to be expected, the roofer recommends the gardener who is sitting right beside him and continues to maintain his silence but then, by giving the architect a brief nod, he indicates his assent.

The landscape architect, a cousin of the householder who resides in the nearby spa town, now comes by on a daily basis to discuss the plans with the householder and gardener and oversee the work. On the flat upper stretch of land between house and lake, the pine forest is to be cleared away and topsoil added so that the lawn will take root well. The smaller part of the meadow on the left-hand side, directly in front of the house, is to be ringed with evergreens and elderberry, and only a rose-bed will separate it from the terrace.

The boundary of the larger part of the meadow, to the right of the path that leads down to the water, will be defined in back by the wooden fence running between it and the next-door property, which is still in its natural state, the edge facing the hill by the big oak tree and a grouping of fir shrubs, the edge nearest the house by forsythia, lilac and a few rhododendrons, and the edge fronting the sandy road by shrubs planted along the row of fieldstones marking the border of the property.

The addition of a few new trees will contribute to the impression of a natural gradation: a hawthorn at the edge of the meadow to the left, and on the meadow to the right a Japanese cherry, a walnut and a blue spruce — in each case placed so as to lead up to the bushes or the larger trees already standing in the background.

To supplement the pines, the young oak saplings and the little hazelnut shrubs that grow naturally on the slope leading down to the lake, additional bushes will be planted close together to make it more stable.

A path paved with broken flagstones leading down the slope in eight times eight steps will provide access to the lake.

Since the patch of land down near the water is particularly shady and damp thanks to the alders that grow along the shore, the landscape architect in consultation with the householder instructs the gardener to fell several of the trees there and drain the land along the shoreline. In order to make the most of this spot, which isn’t terribly inviting, the householder decides to have a workshop and a woodshed built there according to his own specifications. Later it can be established where a good place will be to build a dock.

Each of the two upper meadows with its natural frame will become an arena, the landscape architect says to his cousin, the householder, while the gardener is dumping out a wheelbarrow full of compost-rich soil on the site of the future rose-bed in front of the terrace. The householder says: Basically it’s always just a matter of framing the view. And providing variety, the landscape architect says: light and shade, open spaces and thickly overgrown ones, looking down from above, looking up from below. With the edge of his shovel, the gardener distributes the soil evenly across the bed. The vertical and the horizontal must stand in a salutary relationship to one another, the householder says. Precisely, says the landscape architect, and that’s why this naturally cascading slope leading down to the water is ideal. The gardener wheels the empty barrow away. The two men stand on the terrace and from this vantage point gaze down at the lake, which is gleaming and sparkling between the reddish trunks of the pines. The gardener wheels up the next barrowful of soil and dumps it out. To tame the wilderness and then make it intersect with culture — that’s what art is, the householder says. Precisely, says his cousin, nodding. With the edge of his shovel, the gardener distributes the soil evenly across the bed. To avail oneself of beauty regardless of where one finds it, the owner says. Precisely. The gardener wheels his empty barrow past the two men standing on the terrace, both of them now silent.

And so the gardener fells several pine trees, saws them up and stacks the wood in the woodshed, he clears the roots and spreads a generous layer of topsoil over the Brandenburg sand, the gardener lays the path between the small and large meadows, and then extends it down the hill, eight times eight steps made of natural sandstone, he sows grass, plants the roses, plants shrubs to frame the small and large meadows, plants bushes on the slope, sets out hawthorn, walnut, Japanese cherry and blue spruce, as he digs he works his way through a thin layer of humus and then strikes bedrock that has to be broken up with the spade, for only beneath this is the layer of sand with the groundwater coursing through it, and finally beneath this sand is the blue clay that is found everywhere in this region. Once upon a time the waters of the lake washed over this rise that is called the Schäferberg or Shepherd’s Mountain by the locals, and thousands of years ago the Schäferberg was nothing but a shoal beneath the surface of the water, just as the Gurkenberg is today, or the Black Horn, the Keperling, the Hoffte, the Bulzenberg, the Nackliger, whose name means “naked man,” or Mindach’s Hill. The layer of sand beneath the bedrock that the gardener uncovers when he is digging his holes still displays a wave-like pattern, immortalizing the winds that blew across the water long ago. The gardener excavates the holes for the plants up to a depth of 80 centimeters and fills the bottom with composted soil so that the shrubs, bushes, Japanese cherry, hawthorn, blue spruce and walnut will flourish. Down beside the shore of the lake the gardener chops down five alder trees, clears the roots, braids green spruce twigs and places them in the boreholes so the black earth at the bottom will dry out. The gardener waters the roses, shrubs and young trees twice a day during the summer, once early in the morning and once at dusk, and he continues to water the bare soil of both meadows until the grass begins to sprout.

The gardener prunes all the bushes that overhang the stone perimeter in the fall, and prunes the forsythia and lilac the following spring as soon as they have blossomed. He removes the weeds from between the roses, prunes the roses, and has the farmers give him cattle dung that he uses to fertilize the hawthorn, walnut and Japanese cherry as well as the forsythia, lilac and rhododendron; he waters the roses and bushes twice a day during the summer, once early in the morning and once at dusk, on each of the meadows he places a sprinkler that bows to one side and then the other for half an hour twice a day, once early in the morning, and once when dusk is already beginning to gather, the gardener mows the grass once every two or three weeks. In fall, he saws the dry branches from the big trees with a long saw and smokes out the moles, in fall he rakes up the leaves from the meadows and burns them, when fall is coming to an end he empties all the water pipes in the house and shuts off the main valve, in winter he heats the house when the architect and his wife will be arriving and turns the water back on for the length of their stay.