Casanova—Stefan Kiesbye

When he was sixteen, they lived in Wedersen’s industrial suburb of Esge, in a townhouse on a small, man-made hill across from the candy factory. Ever since growing his first soft stubble, Erich had fallen, it seemed to him, out of favor with his father. Mr. Lehrer wanted his son to cut grass and carry the cases of beer from the car up four flights of stairs to the last of the red-brick houses. He also wanted Erich to wash the family’s silver sedan, and to rake leaves in the fall. All of which Erich refused to do. Long grass was ecologically preferable to the buzz cut his father favored. The brown leaves winterized the garden and fell, Erich heatedly explained, for a reason. “Get it?” he hissed, and left the dining table, locked the door to his upstairs room, and listened to The Cure. He wasn’t lazy, he’d argued again and again, but why should someone do work that destroyed the very thing you were working on? And as for the car – it was better to drive through the carwash, where the dirty water could be recycled. Why should the suds and oil residue poison the ground they were living on?

Maybe it was the loss of his sister Julia to teen-pregnancy and marriage that finally smoothed things over; maybe it was the fact that Erich was now a head taller than his dad, after growing four inches in the last year. Maybe it was Erich’s interest in staying away from home even on the weekends – the drama group, youth club, bars, parties – that showed his father that there was little time left for the two of them together. Whatever the reason, Mr. Lehrer had softened his stance and didn’t ask Erich to cut grass or wash the Peugeot anymore. Even though now, in October, most of the lawn was covered with yellowed leaves, Mr. Lehrer raked them without asking for help.

“Are you dating Brigitte?” Erich’s father asked one day when his son was ready to bike downtown to his friend.

“You know, in my time...” Mr. Lehrer paused, waiting for his son to dismiss this introduction with a laugh, a snort. Yet it didn’t come, and puzzled, he continued to speak, “Well, it meant something if we visited a girl at her home.”

This rebuke strangely encouraged Mr. Lehrer; this was the Erich he knew. “Is she not pretty, not your type?”

“What is your type? I liked the brunette who was visiting you the other day, Sylvia. I think she gave you the eye.”

This remark earned Erich’s dad another moment of silence, a silence that grew deeper with every second. If at first Erich had nervously played with the handle bar, he now gripped it tightly, his knuckles turning red, then white.

“No-o.” Erich shook his head and shoulder-length hair. He had, had taken the book in the evenings after his parents had turned in for the night, and read Casanova’s exploits. Later, his hands helped him getting over the achingly colorful images in his head.
“Well, why don’t you. I’d like to know what you think of it.”

The book, along with copies of Fanny Hill and Delta of Venus – although Erich had overheard his parents’ disparaging remarks about the portrayed incest – had wandered from neighbor to neighbor, through the hands of the Lehrers’ birthday circle, the ‘clique.’ When Erich read Fanny Hill, the yellowed pages – although he couldn’t find it in himself to put the book down – had filled him with a vague nausea. What had its previous readers done in response to episodes in the whorehouse or the description of the well-endowed youth who delivers letters and so much more to Fanny? And Erich regretted, like Fanny’s first lover and later husband, that she served and enjoyed so many men after her deflowering – he felt the hands of Rüdiger Grützke from next door and those of Reinhard Bottkopp all over Fanny’s delicate, yet full, figure. Erich’s own hands searched for Kleenex to erase the evidence of his doings.

In Brigitte’s presence, Erich called his parents’ birthday circle the “sex carousel” or “petting club.”

“Do they really have sex?” Brigitte asked, making wild-cherry tea and arranging Prinzenrolle cookies on a plate. Her room resembled a sauna, with its light wooden paneling and light wooden floors. Only a white, fluffy carpet and several Chinese fans on the walls softened the picture. Yet it had its own shower and a separate entrance. Brigitte’s parents had thought of renting out the space to single workers or students of Wedersen’s vocational school, but in the end Brigitte had convinced them of her need for privacy.

“Sex? No. At least...well, who knows.”

“So?”

“But they make out. I mean, my dad brags about his flirts and about kissing his colleagues’ wives.”

“How many of them are there?” Brigitte dipped a cookie into her tea, losing half of it in the cup. How long Erich’s legs were, nice legs, shaped almost like a woman’s. He had grown his hair almost to his shoulders, and she wanted to get up and pet him.

“Ten. Always the same ten. I mean, it’s wife swapping, though without the ‘act.’

“Gross.”

“I’m telling you.”

Erich and Brigitte had ‘dated’ three years previous, which meant they’d gone to one of Wedersen’s two cafés, had hot chocolates, and later took walks through the town park, past the old cloister and to the small pond. They looked at the goldfish in the murky and trash-filled waters, and then Erich rode the two miles back to Esge.

Now the two were friends, drank tea, exchanged poems and talked about new crushes. Brigitte had a hunger for boys, Erich suspected, and followed with quiet disbelief her fantasies about older classmen. He felt superior to Brigitte’s cravings, a trait Brigitte noticed and failed to mention. She herself felt superior to Erich, who had made out with a girl only twice, and didn’t know what he was talking about when he mentioned sex. But he was a good listener. He was better than a girlfriend, really, because he wasn’t after men. Their hunting grounds were separate.

“I thought your dad was cute. The few times I saw him.”

“Cute?”

“He’s charming. Nice. Like you.”

“Oh God. He’s constantly asking if I have a girlfriend. Whenever Sylvia or Rita comes over, his eyes fall out. I think he thinks I’m doing it with them.”

“But you’re not,” she said with a straight face. “I’m prettier than Sylvia or Rita. Your father would like me.”

“Stop it. What he really wants is to cheat on my mom. But he doesn’t have the guts to do it.”

“How do you know?”

He didn’t. But although young and arrogant – Brigitte stressed the latter often enough in an almost loving tone – he was good at sensing what others felt. It was a well-trained faculty, the difference between a good and a bad day in the company of his mother. Erich could read her moods even when his mom wasn’t in the room with him. Her moods wafted though the house, and he only had to open the door of his room to smell what he could expect from his mother. He could tell when his parents had quarreled in his absence, even hours after the fact, and he knew that Brigitte was going to give him a hard time. There was something around her eyes and mouth, a cruelty he felt directed at him.

Yet although he registered changes in people, he wasn’t particularly sharp at interpreting them. He had no mind to ask what the mood swings meant or what caused them. And to his own desires, he was blind. Talking with Brigitte about his father only caused him the dulled pain of a hunger he couldn’t name and had no intention of naming.

“What if he’s already done it?” Brigitte asked.

“Cheated on Mom?”

“Maybe even in front of others.”

“No. No,” he laughed. “No.” The thought of his father embracing Monika Grützke, the possibility that she could enjoy his dad’s advances and laugh giddily made him seasick.

Without thinking, and without knowing why – was it his arrogant little laugh? – Brigitte said, “I think he would. If he had the chance.” She felt immediately pleased with her words; they already showed their impact on Erich. He was quiet now, his eyes and mouth open.

“As if I want to know,” he finally said.

“Don’t you?”

Vera Lehrer played the accordion, an instrument she had loved since childhood, and which she, at age forty-three, had recently started to learn. After ironing her husband’s white shirts, the house smelling sickly of starch and damp fabrics, she climbed the stairs to the guest bedroom and opened guiltily the large green case holding her Quetsche. She wasn’t worth the money that had gone into the accordion, nor the money she spent on Monday night lessons. She didn’t earn any money of her own, and so she shouldn’t have bought the shiny red instrument, which breathed like a human being, which she made breathe the way Dr. Frankenstein had brought his monster to life. No, she thought, what nonsense I am making up. It’s not a Golem. Yet she felt dizzied by the power of the Quetsche, a power that was beyond her control.

With the first sound, Vera Lehrer shuddered, pleased and frightened. Tonight she and her teacher’s group would play at the Gryheim retirement home, and Vera was going through the scores, anxious not to make any mistake. No mistake, she whispered, eyes pinned to the lines, focusing so hard, the notes blinked and swirled in front of her. No mistake, no mistake. She tightened her grip and started to play a polka.

Erich in his room, stretched out on the blue bed, reading Goethe’s Werther for school, a half-empty bag of gummi bears next to him, a full one waiting impatiently on the nightstand, shuddered at the first sounds of his mother’s play.

She played the way she drove the car, seat pushed up all the way, hands and elbows on the steering wheel. She clenched her teeth, furrowed her brows and started sweating. By the time she reached 15 miles per hour, she was already in third gear, the engine blubbering helplessly, never allowed to rev and flex its muscle.

Last Christmas, Erich’s mother had played a few carols, each time when she hit the wrong note saying “God,” or “Damn.” She had grown smaller, and her face harder, with each song. She’d looked terrified.

Erich put on his headphones, playing his Eurythmics tape. Accordion. It wasn’t even a real instrument. An instrument for cheap bars and folks in traditional peasant garments playing ridiculous traditional dances.

Mr. Lehrer came home shortly before five, pulling off his wet socks in the hall, walking, his bare feet white and soft from the moisture, upstairs to take a shower. He heard his wife playing, slowly and harshly, too slow for the polka, he thought, but he was no expert. He suppressed his customary “Hello,” which to Erich sounded like something from a horror movie, the unsuspecting tenant walking briskly into the haunted house. Hello?

There had been one major problem to solve for Brigitte and Erich. If Mr. Lehrer wanted to cheat on his wife, where could he do it, and when? The first part of the problem was difficult. A hotel was out of the question; Mr. Lehrer wouldn’t spend the money, because his wife handled all the bills. And the Lehrers didn’t own a cabin by the sea, or a camper in the Harz mountains. Brigitte’s place had seemed like a solution at first, but no, Mr. Lehrer would never go after Brigitte in her parents’ house, no matter how shielded her room was from the rest of the family. And how would he get there in the first place, under what pretext?

No, Brigitte and Erich had concluded, the townhouse on Sugar Hill was the only place possible. Once they had settled this part of the question, the second part came easy. Erich and his mom had to be away, Brigitte and Erich’s dad alone.

“And then what?” Erich had asked his friend. His voice was high, breathless. By then, Brigitte sat in front of him on the white, plushy carpet, her eyes looking up into his. Later, she thought, he will think it was all my idea. No, first he’ll be convinced that he came up with the plan, he’ll be proud of his cunning. But later, later he’ll blame me.

She noticed Erich’s high, squeaky voice, the red spots that colored his cheeks. As if they were planning to steal the teacher’s car, Erich laughed and snorted in excited disbelief. Then, as they discussed the possible dates, he grew quieter, the weight of their plan pulling down his smile, his chin, dulling the shimmer of his eyes.

“We can do it,” he said, not convinced, she thought, or doubting already. Erich wasn’t the type to go through with a plan like this. Not Erich. He was a dreamer, planner, but not the General of his ideas. He could be the brain behind a breast-cancer fundraiser or a war, but he would never put his plans into action.

Brigitte also noticed something else in his eyes, and reacting to that something, got up on her knees and offered her lips to him.

As thirteen-year olds, they’d never kissed – that had been for the wild kids, the smokers and drinkers – but now Erich pressed his face into Brigitte’s, and soon his hands were on her back, unclasping her bra – a trick he’d learned this summer at a classmate’s garden party.

Brigitte let it happen, and, just as she had expected, Erich’s hands fell away shortly after. “You don’t...,” he said.

“I don’t what?”

“We’re not...”

“No, we’re not.”

“We shouldn’t if we want to do...do this.”

“You’re right,” she said, and pulled her sweater back over her breasts.

Erich thought of those breasts now as he lay on his bed, headphones still on, but with no music playing. Instead he heard the water of the shower running, his father closing the sliding doors. Erich heard the doors rattle each time his father’s elbow or knee bumped into them.

Without touching them, Erich had stared at Brigitte’s breasts, soft, lazily slumped on her chest, as if stretching on a silken ottoman. Her nipples were large, hardly any darker than her skin. With the sweater scrunched above them, a bit of lace showing, her breasts looked astonished. They seemed helpless and frightened, like moles in sunlight. And Brigitte, who had let him stare, whom he had kissed and touched, would come to his door in an hour, and he would not be home. His mom would not be home. Only his father.

How handsome he was in his black and ivory sweat suit, sitting in front of the television, his hair washed and slicked back, feet resting on another armchair. She’d heard him coming, of course, she’d felt him coming the way she felt her children’s presence or absence. A mother felt her children, could read their minds more often than not, and knew when they were in danger. She knew. She knew. And wasn’t she here to watch over him as his wife, and, almost, his mother?

She hadn’t dared interrupt her play, out of fear she might blunder at tonight’s concert. She wasn’t a soloist, oh no, but a wrong note, a botched grip, could throw the whole group off. The audience would stare at her, and all the beautiful music would turn against her, exclude her, take the accordion away from her.

“I have to go soon,” she said.

“You practiced?” Walter Lehrer asked, knowing how much it pleased his wife to talk about her and her music. More than playing, she enjoyed the talking after a performance. Her eyes won back their life, the hardness and harshness left her shoulders and face, and she smiled as if she’d just slain a dragon.

Vera put her arms around her husband’s head, and he turned to give her a kiss. Erich was upstairs, they were practically alone in the house, but all he ever saw were her tightly pursed lips, held out to give him a kids’ smooch.

At parties, after two glasses of Burgundy, her skin started to breathe, her eyes bloomed, and Walter had often seen how one of his colleagues fell into those brown eyes. Vera was short, compact, but late at night, her flesh softened, like in those pictures by that painter, Rubens? Yet come bedtime, his hands were not greeted by Vera’s soft flesh. No, she wanted to cuddle, to be held, and his hands were in the way, made her feel cold, hurt her breasts, or made her giggle frantically. Vera’s body was a fortress, a funhouse, a clinic, and a kindergarten. The few times she relented, he was all by himself, he felt. He could have been making love to an anaesthetized ER patient.

The suit again, always the black and white sweat suit. He looked like one of the geezers in the retirement home Erich’s mom was playing at tonight. The white work uniform was okay, but in the sweat suit he looked as small and unimportant as he really was. And he’d already opened his first bottle of beer. It wasn’t even six yet. Three more would follow, until he’d fall asleep in his armchair following the eight o’clock news. Cute, Erich thought, yeah right. Cute.

“I’m going to town. Dieter wants me to help him with math,” he said.

“I’m sorry I can’t drive you,” Mr. Lehrer said. “Your mother needs the car.” He hoped his son would stay a bit longer; he still wanted to talk to Erich.

“That’s okay, Dad.”

“Sorry about that.”

“I’d rather take the bike anyway.”

“Okay then,” Mr. Lehrer said. “Hey champ, Dieter isn’t a girl, huh?”

“Dad.” Erich rolled his eyes, but his anger didn’t feel too real to himself. He was thinking of Brigitte getting ready to come over. What would she be wearing, how would she carry herself? Whenever Erich thought of her sitting on the white, plushy carpet across from him, he wanted to stay home, call her and cancel their plans. But when he looked at his father in his stupid suit, he felt an anger deeper than that about silly remarks and beer bottles, an exasperation that strengthened his resolve to leave.

“Has Mom left?” Erich’s voice was so scratchy and low, his father didn’t understand him.

“Yeah,” he said after Erich repeated the question. “And now I’ll be left all alone.”

“You can take it.”

“Hey, have you read the book in the meantime?”

“Dad.” He looked away from his father to the television screen, where Heinz Koepke hosted the news.

“What? You’re a young man. I’m interested in what you’re thinking about it.”

“That’s an ancient book.”

“So what. These things haven’t changed. We might think we’re all so modern, but really, we’re always the same animals.”

“But I don’t want to read it.”

“Don’t tell me you’re not interested.”

Erich had to leave. He didn’t have the time to tell his dad that love was different now, that what he felt had nothing to do with anything Walter Lehrer had ever felt. He had to go. But this old man in his sweat suit made him angrier every moment he stayed, his low, soft voice, his thin legs and white feet. How could Brigitte have found him cute? “Dad, you’re married,” he said, and wasn’t sure if it was a reproach or a warning.

“Yes, I know.” A shadow appeared on Mr. Lehrer’s face, but Erich couldn’t tell why. Was it the marriage he was thinking of, or was he bothered by Erich’s remark?

“I’m not an old man.”

“Right. Then why don’t you go and pick up some women?”

Instead of throwing an angry response at his son, Mr. Lehrer looked curious. “I’m not old,” he said slowly, strangely flattered by his son’s words. Erich was a pretty boy; he would have many girlfriends if he played his cards right. He might already have a few. “Yet, as you just pointed out, I’m married. What would I do with girls? I have your mom.”

“You wouldn’t have to tell her.”

“And you think that’d be alright?” There was no sarcasm in his father’s voice; he sounded interested.
“If you don’t tell her,” Erich said. Better having an affair than going after the neighbors’ wives. He would have respected a real escapade. “But, I guess, it takes a lot of guts.”

“That’s cheating.”

“And reading Casanova?”

“That’s reading.”

“But the thought counts, doesn’t it?”

“You’re young.”

“Oh God. Then why did you ask in the first place? And by the way, I don’t want to know about what you’re thinking about stories.” Erich didn’t say, If you’re a man you just go and have sex and shut up, yet his father heard him nonetheless.

“You’re right,” Mr. Lehrer said. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

The questions about sex and affairs had been bad, yet his father’s apology made Erich feel dirty. His anger fell away, like a shield that had been kicked out of his hands, and he felt naked in front of his dad. Could this man in the sweat suit read his thoughts about Brigitte, who was on her way now? Brigitte with lazy breasts and curly blonde hair, self-assured Brigitte.

Maybe Erich had ruined it all now. How could his dad confront Brigitte without smelling foul play? The plan seemed too obvious; it reeked of a trap. It was children’s play. Oh how stupid he was, how stupid.

As the concert progressed, her fellow players swaying their instruments, moved by their own play, by the entertainment-hungry audience, and memories of musicians on TV, Vera Lehrer played less and less. After her first false notes, she felt the thick-glassed eyes of the seniors on her, the wrathful look of the conductor, and she sensed the contemptuous smiles of her colleagues. She still swayed to the music, but played only the notes she was certain to hit correctly. A few in the beginning, a few during her favorite, and some more during the easiest passages. This cheered her up; how good she fit in with the rest of the accordion group, how good she was at swaying with the others! She still opened and closed her red, shiny, instrument, but her fingers, which moved rapidly over the keys and buttons failed to press or hit them. She was a silent musician. What would she tell at home?

Erich took his bike from the shed and rode across the lawn in the back of the houses and down to the parking lot, down the hill to Industriestrasse. Yet instead of turning right, toward the road leading to town and to Dieter’s house, he turned to the forest behind the candy factory, behind the apartment houses for indispensable employees, and the parking lot for the factory’s fleet of trucks.

After five minutes, he got off and pushed his bike from the dirt path into a group of bushes and small trees. The warm days of early October were over, and the chance of factory kids roaming the area slim. It hadn’t rained in days, but the ground behind Sugar Hill was still wet. It had been an overcast day, with a pink shimmer in the gray, a shimmer that wasn’t there if you looked too closely at the clouds. In an hour, it would be too dark to see the puddles, the thin, thin branches of dead trees.

Next to Sugar Hill, another, slightly smaller hill had been created fifty years ago from the excavations for Esge’s railroad line. Yet no one had ever bothered to use it. No one but the kids of the indispensable employees. Fox Hill was their hill. It bordered on the candy factory’s junkyard, a children’s paradise, if you knew how to avoid the security guards.

For years, the factory kids had built their shacks on Fox Hill, in shouting range of their mothers, and only spring and summer, oak trees and maples, made it impossible to see from one hill what was going on on the other.

Erich’s brother-in-law had played on Fox Hill before him. When it was his turn, Erich and the neighbor kids had dragged plywood and leftover Ytong bricks up the hill and built a two-story shack. They had even dug a cave, a hole deep and wide enough to accommodate eight children, and installed a heavy old coal oven to keep them warm and burn whatever they found in the junkyard. It had taken one full afternoon to push and pull the oven up to the shack. Winters, before the fire had a chance to warm them, the smoke had drenched their clothes and driven them out of the cave.

The roof was gone now, and the oven had been overturned. They’d always had trouble keeping away Esge’s other neighborhood gangs, who met peacefully at school downtown, but warred bitterly in the jungles and on the prairies after classes were over. Trinkets had been stolen and re-stolen, flags had been torn, roofs and walls smashed. Yet no one had ever been able to lift the oven out of the cave.

Walter had opened his second bottle of beer and watched the six o’clock news. Every morning, he got up at 4:30 to start working at the candy factory, and by nine in the evening, it was high time to go to sleep. His three or four hours of spare time he liked to spend in his brown, plushy armchair, his body feeling cleansed from working in the sticky sweet smells of toffee and chocolate, light and lazy after the first beers. He floated in his chair, the noises of his wife’s playing and Erich’s stereo gone. He was alone and welcomed a feeling of hunger that spread agreeably. What would he eat for dinner?

Maybe there was still a frozen pizza left, he thought, and was suddenly flooded by gratitude that watered his eyes, by gratitude he couldn’t quite explain. A frozen pizza maybe with mushrooms and pepperoni. And with Vera and Erich gone, he could eat it his way, forking off the cheese and toppings first, then eating the naked crust. But before Walter could get up from his chair to walk down to the large freezer in the basement, the doorbell rang.

She could hear the ring of the bell through the glass door. Had Erich been able to get away in time?

Brigitte was dressed in a skirt and light sweater, heels not too high, not too much make-up. She should have worn a jacket; how would she get home without freezing? How would she get home at all?

Brigitte knew the Lehrers from school activities, but ever since dating Erich as a thirteen-year old, she hadn’t talked to either of his parents. She had stood several moments in front of the Lehrer’s door, unable to move forward or back. There was an emptiness in her head; no plan was strong enough now to push her along, to tell her the next step. There was still time to run away, yet despite wobbly knees and cold hands, she was curious. She was breaking into Erich’s family, she was like an undercover agent on Miami Vice. She was tough, brave, and beautiful. She’d taken the pill since age fourteen.

But her shoes looked all wrong now, too shabby, too Brigitte, too schoolgirl. She thought of her biology test tomorrow, and that she hadn’t done any work for it yet. There was still time to run away.

Yet in the end, the brass button for the doorbell was all she could see or think about, the only way to get over her paralysis and move forward.

The kiss Erich had given her, no, that she had given Erich, swished through her mind. How stupid he could be. Erich, her first big crush. Three days ago, he could have had her, all of her. Instead he had stared at her breasts as if they were the eighth wonder of the world, or a python hypnotizing little Mogli. He’d had his chance at losing his virginity she knew he still owned like a plastic Fix und Foxi lunchbox. Yet the sight of her breasts had stopped him cold. Erich.

Recognizing Brigitte, Walter raised an arm in surprise, and after slowly approaching the entrance door, hurried the last steps to open it.

“No. No, in fact, I think he’s at Dieter’s.” Walter was polite. He never let visitors, not even Jehovah’s witnesses, stand in front of the door. He waved Brigitte in and closed the door behind her.

Now he had to wait, and he discovered that he had not thought about what he would do. After climbing back up Fox Hill, he sat down in the old camping chair in the shack’s main room. A couple years ago, they had carried two overstuffed armchairs over from Sugar Hill, a donation of the Hartbergs. The mustard colored plush was saggy now, mold building green and white continents everywhere.

In this room, with the help of Praline magazines Jens Drechsler had stolen from his parents, Erich had learned the meaning of ‘circle jerk.’ It had been dark though, and he was still convinced that Jens, the youngest then at twelve, had faked it.

Erich lifted the cushion of one of the seats, and there the magazines still were, maybe not the same ones, but Pralines anyway. They were so wet, the pages tore when he tried to turn them.

A great concert it had been, though her part in it, Vera Lehrer admitted to herself in the car, had been small. In the end, the seniors had danced to the accordion group’s polkas and demanded an encore, then another one.

The tension she’d felt earlier had lifted, and the instruments playing what she couldn’t follow, the faces of the audience following her every clumsy move, all that already turned into a benign memory. No, it hadn’t been the victory she’d dreamed of, but neither had it been a defeat. She felt relaxed, relieved, and took this feeling gladly for happiness.

At home, she didn’t lift the instrument out of the trunk. She was tired, and the rheumatism that had crept into her joints the winter after giving birth to Erich, Erich who had almost been strangled by the umbilical cord and whose face was all blue when he came out of her womb, acted up these damp fall days.

She had given birth to Erich in a hospital near the Baltic Sea. That winter it had been so cold that waves froze as they jumped ashore. Sunday visitors took sliding steps onto the ice and children shrieked, holding striped candy in their gloved hands. On the boardwalk, somebody sold bratwurst and spicy hot wine.

Propped up, Vera had looked out at the curving valleys and the colored spots of bright woolen hats among the ice labyrinth. Later she lost sight of them as fog rolled in from the sea, gray spots of snow whirling at the window. Chewing on bratwurst or sucking on a eucalyptus lozenge, tardy explorers looked between ice waves for their way back to the shore until they reached open water. Five people had died that winter, and Vera lost most of her teeth before February. They said you lose one tooth for every child, but Erich had cost her nineteen.

It was only 8:30, but dark now, the wind driving leaves in circles around her feet. Walter will get the instrument, Vera thought, or Erich. The Quetsche shouldn’t stay in the cold all night.

The TV was on, but her husband was not asleep. He came down the few steps from the living room into the hall and gave her a kiss, lips puckered, eyes closed.

Vera nodded, took off her coat and thought of her accordion in the trunk of the Peugeot. She turned toward her husband, but he was wearing his sweat suit and no socks, and she herself felt too grateful to be inside to ask him to go get the instrument. Oh, it could wait.

He caught up with her on Industriestrasse, near the parking lot for the administrative employees. He’d waited in the shack, then went back again to Sugar Hill, waited on the backside of his house, which had only two small windows for the two bathrooms. Erich sat with his back to the red brick wall, three yards away from the entrance and Brigitte’s bicycle.

The cold stiffened his back, numbed his hands and feet, and he wondered if that was how snakes felt when the winter came. At a quarter to eight, the door opened, and he heard Brigitte’s footsteps, the scratchy sound of heels. Erich listened for a conversation, whispered good-byes, but there was nothing. Only Brigitte’s footsteps, Brigitte pushing her bike down the steps toward the parking lot.

It took him a while to retrieve his own bike at the bottom of Fox Hill, and he was out of breath when he finally pulled alongside Brigitte. The thick gathering of clouds above had broken up, maybe the cold was shooing them away. Erich didn’t say anything, waited for his friend to start. His curiosity suddenly seemed childish. What could he possibly have asked her?

But Brigitte didn’t speak. She looked at Erich though, curious maybe, or as if he had chocolate or ketchup smeared around his mouth.

“How was what? What do you want to know?” She still looked at him, and her eyes, her mouth didn’t seem angry. No, not angry.

“Well, what do you mean?” Brigitte reached down and tipped the dynamo to the wheel. It wailed sharply, and the light, first flickering and dark, grew steady.

Brigitte was too fast for Erich, her mouth working as quickly as the bike’s dynamo. It took him several seconds before he replied, “Yes.”

He slowed down, searching for the right word, as if he could find it on the bike path ahead of him. There had to be the one word to start this conversation, one word to describe and ban what seemed too dark, big and ungainly to think about.

Brigitte rode on, and he pedaled harder to catch up again. “Testy,” he said.

Erich looked for signs that Brigitte had slept with his father. Was her skirt ruffled, her sweater out of shape, were her stockings torn? “So did you have sex with him? That’s what we wanted, right?”

“Yeah, but you weren’t there, were you? You didn’t undress your father and hold his cock.”

Erich’s breathing grew heavy, as if his lungs were full of mucus. Or maybe they were full of holes, not able to keep in the air. “So you did?”

Brigitte stopped her bike, her brakes screeching although she didn’t brake hard. They sounded like fighting cats.

Erich jumped off his bike, but stared ahead of him, at the lights of oncoming cars, the stars that now appeared over the end of Industriestrasse. They were standing in front of an old building near the main road to Wedersen, a building that once had been a branch of the local savings bank, but now housed a paint and body repair shop. Even though the workers had long gone, the air still smelled of paint and thinners.

“No Erich. Not really. It was my idea, I went to your dad, and it has nothing to do with you. You have nothing to do with it.”

“You should hear yourself.” With that, she got onto her bike, and Erich didn’t stop her, didn’t ride after her, just watched Brigitte turn and vanish behind a group of Juniper trees.

Vera accepted the glass of wine her husband offered her, and once she sat on the couch, he lay down next to her, his head in her lap.

“It’s bedtime soon.” She stroked his hair, which was graying at the temples and around the ears, scratched his scalp gently.

Vera picked up a long blonde hair from the back of Walter’s suit and held it to the light. “A hair,” she said.

She heard her son tiptoeing up the stairs at 9:32, the digits on her alarm clock the only light in the bedroom. Her husband already had started to snore, and she was wondering whether she should sleep another night in the guest room.

“Erich,” she whispered when he came out of the bathroom. She could smell his minty-fresh breath. “Where were you?”

“You’re spending so much time away now,” she said, but there was no reprimand in her voice. “Did you have a good time?”

“Yeah,” Erich said. He seemed impatient with her, but all young people were impatient. Impatience was of the essence when you had all your life in front of you.

“You’re almost grown-up now,” Vera Lehrer said. Before her son could escape her, she hugged him, slinging her arms around him. He could feel her nipples through the thin nightgown. “Good night, son, my grown-up son.” Then she went into the guest room and lay down on the sofa, spreading a rough, woolen blanket over her. The long, blonde hair came to her mind, and she wondered if Erich invited girls over when she was away. Maybe.

This thought kept her awake a few moments longer. It warmed her, tickled her limbs, and she kept it floating in her mind until Erich’s lovely face slowly melted, grew smaller, and she dozed away.