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- Herausgeber: Hesperus Press Ltd.
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
Do you love him Marie?' 'Um… of course… I love Jesus' I stammered. "Great guy.' 'I'm talking about the man you intend to marry in my church…' 'Oh…' Cataclysmic events are nigh in Malente, Germany. Satan (a dead ringer for George Clooney) is on the prowl, recruiting horsemen for next week's Armageddon - and in a boring, provincial place like this, he's apparently spoiled for choice. One might hope that the Archangel Gabriel would be some help since he's in town, but he's too busy with a tantric sex marathon to deliver anyone from evil. Meanwhile gentle, sandal-wearing carpenter Joshua encounters, by chance, washed-up thirtysomething singleton Marie. She's hit a career dead-end, and her dad's gone and shacked up with some sort of Eastern European nymphomaniac. So when handsome Joshua comes round to work on the roof, she realises she has nothing to lose by asking him out. But what of his divinely-appointed task? The Apocalypse is scheduled for Tuesday. Things are looking grim. Provocative and blasphemous, but with surprising meditations on the nature of faith, free will and human nature, Apocalypse Next Tuesday is a book full of surprises. Wonderfully light and witty, it will keep you laughing from the first page to the last.
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Apocalypse Next Tuesday
David Safier
Translated by Hilary Parnfors
For Marion, Ben and Daniel
… I love you
Contents
Chapter One
There’s no way that Jesus can have looked like that, I thought to myself as I sat in the parish office staring at the painting of the Last Supper. He was a Levantine Jew, wasn’t he? So why did he look like a Bee Gee in most of the pictures?
Before I could get any further in my thoughts, the Reverend Gabriel stepped into the room. He was an elderly gentleman with a beard, piercing eyes and deep frown lines. But then most people would probably get wrinkles like that after more than thirty years of shepherding.
Without any form of greeting, he asked me: ‘Do you love him, Marie?’
‘Yes… erm… of course I love Jesus… great guy…’ I replied.
‘I mean the man whom you want to marry in my church.’
‘Oh.’
The Reverend Gabriel always asked very indiscreet questions. Most people who lived in our little town of Malente tended to think that it was because he had a genuine interest in his congregation. I, on the other hand, thought that he was just incredibly nosy.
‘Yes.’ I replied. ‘Of course I love him.’
My Sven was indeed a very lovable man. A gentle man. A man who made me feel safe. He was a man who did not mind in the slightest that he was with a woman whose BMI called for plaintive prayers. And most important of all, I could be sure that Sven would not cheat on me with an air hostess – unlike my ex Marc, who I can only hope will end up burning in hell under the watchful eye of particularly creative demons.
‘Sit down, Marie,’ Gabriel said, pulling an armchair to his desk. I sunk down into the dark leather, as he sat down opposite me, at his desk. I had to look up at him and realised immediately that this was the angel he was aiming for.
‘So, you want to get married in church?’ Gabriel asked.
‘No, in a chicken run,’ is what would have loved to have answered. Instead I did my best to sound pleasant. ‘Yes, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’
‘I just have one question for you, Marie.’
‘And what would that be?’
‘Why do you want to get married in church?’
The real answer was that there is nothing more unromantic than a wedding at a registry office. And because I had dreamt of a big white wedding as a child and still did, even though I knew in my head that it was seriously naff. But you don’t pay any attention to your head when you’re getting married, do you?
Yet to admit this would not have been particularly helpful to my cause. So I smiled as sweetly as I could and stammered: ‘I… I have a great need to… in the church… in front of God…’
He interrupted me abruptly. ‘Marie: I have basically never ever seen you at any of our services.’
‘I… I… I have a very busy job.’
‘You’re supposed to rest on the seventh day.’
I did rest on the seventh day. And on the sixth day. Sometimes I even pulled a sickie, to rest on one of the first five days too. But I doubt that was what Gabriel meant.
‘You were already doubting God during confirmation class twenty years ago,’ he quipped.
That man certainly had quite a memory. How could he remember that? I was thirteen then and I was going out with a very cool guy called Kevin. It felt like I was in heaven in his arms, and he was the first person I ever snogged. Unfortunately that’s not all he wanted to do: he was also very eager to put his hands under my jumper. I didn’t let him as I felt there was plenty of time for that sort of thing. He didn’t share my view, and that’s why he made sure to get his hands under someone else’s jumper at confirmation camp, right in front of my eyes. The world, as I knew it, ended at that very moment.
And it came as no consolation that he had felt those breasts with the same sensitivity that bakers demonstrate when kneading dough. Nor was my sister Kata, who’s two years older than me, able to cheer me up, even though she said nice things like ‘He didn’t deserve you’, ‘He’s a stupid fool’ or ‘He should be shot’.
So I ran to Gabriel and, with tears in my eyes, I asked him: ‘How can there be a God if there are awful things like heartache?
‘And do you remember what I answered?’ asked Gabriel.
‘God allows heartache, because he gave people free will,’ I droned.
I also remember thinking at the time that it would have been good if God had denied Kevin this power of free will.
‘I also have a free will,’ Gabriel explained. ‘I am retiring soon and no longer need to believe everyone whose godliness I do not feel is genuine. Wait for my successor. He’ll be here in six months.’
‘But we want to get married now!’
‘And that’s my problem, because…?’ he asked provocatively.
I didn’t say anything, just wondered whether it was ever OK to hit a vicar.
‘I don’t like my church being used as an events venue,’ Gabriel explained, looking at me with his piercing eyes. I was almost beginning to feel bad. My anger gave way to a diffuse sense of guilt.
‘There is another protestant church in this town, you know,’ he said.
‘But… I don’t want to get married in that one.’
‘And why not?’
‘Because… because…’ I didn’t know whether I should say why. But it actually didn’t make any difference, because Gabriel clearly didn’t have a very good impression of me anyway. So I sheepishly told him. ‘Because my parents got married in that church.’
Amazingly, Gabriel now became more gentle. ‘You’re in your mid-thirties. Shouldn’t you be over your parents’ divorce by now?’
‘Of course I am… it would be ridiculous if I wasn’t,’ I replied. I had actually had a couple of hours of therapy, until it got too expensive. Parents really should be forced to open a savings account as soon as their children are born so that they can pay for psychologists later on.
‘But you’re still afraid that it might be unlucky to get married in the same church as your parents?’ Gabriel asked.
After a moment’s hesitation I nodded. ‘Well, I’m superstitious.’
He gave me a surprisingly sympathetic look. It seemed that his Christian love was kicking in.
‘All right then,’ he said. ‘You can get married here.’
I could hardly believe my ears. ‘You… you’re an angel, Rev!’
‘I know,’ he replied, smiling in a strangely melancholy way.
When Gabriel realised that I’d seen the expression on his face, he ordered me to leave right away. ‘Quick, before I change my mind.’
Full of relief, I jumped up and hurried towards the door. Another painting caught my eye. This one was a depiction of the Resurrection of Christ. And I thought to myself that it really did look like Jesus might start singing Stayin’ Alive.
Chapter Two
‘I told you the Reverend was a nice man,’ said Sven, as he sat next to me on the sofa, massaging my feet in our cute little rooftop apartment. Unlike all other men, he actually liked doing it, which I felt could only be explained by a rare genetic defect. My ex-boyfriends had basically only ever massaged me for about ten minutes and then demanded sex afterwards as a thank you for their great efforts. This was particularly true of Marc, the air hostess-lover.
Before I met Sven in my mid-thirties, I was single and my sex life was non-existent. Every time I saw women with babies, I realised that my biological clock was ticking. And every time those completely exhausted mothers smiled at me pityingly, telling me that having children was the only way to find peace, my exceedingly fragile self-confidence took a hit. In such moments I could only calm myself down with a song that I had specifically composed for these occasions: ‘I don’t have no stretch marks, Doo-da, Doo-da! I don’t have no stretch marks, Oh, de doo-da day, hey!’
I was already trying to come to terms with the fact that I would probably end up like one of those women whose decayed corpse is found by chance in her one-bedroom apartment by a house clearance company seven months after her death. And then I met Sven.
I had sung my stretch mark song a little too loudly at a café in Malente whilst walking past an exceedingly annoying new yummy mummy. This happy, fulfilled mother then showed me just how at peace with herself she was by throwing a cup of coffee in my face. I tripped, fell and hit my head on the edge of a table. With a gash across my forehead, I took a taxi straight to the hospital and was greeted by Sven. He was working there as a nurse. I can’t say that he was particularly attractive – that’s why we were very well-suited. When I cried as the wound was stitched, he gave me his handkerchief. When I moaned about the stains on my shirt, he comforted me. And when I thanked him for everything, he invited me out for a pizza. Fifteen pizzas later, I moved in and was overjoyed never to have to see my one-bedroom apartment ever again.
Another eighty-four dinners later, Sven proposed in the most perfect way imaginable – down on one knee, with a wonderful ring that must have cost him at least a month’s wages. And he even got the kids’ football team he trained in his spare time to make a giant heart out of roses and sing ‘You Are My Heart’s Delight’.
‘Will you marry me?’ he asked.
For a moment I thought, ‘If I say no now, those kids will be traumatised for life.’
Then I answered, deeply moved. ‘Of course!’
Sven was rubbing my feet when my eyes were drawn to the Malente Post. He had circled one of the property ads.
‘You’ve… circled something there?’
‘There’s a new development area that’s in our price range.’
‘And why would we want to look at that?’ I asked in an alarmed tone.
‘Well, it wouldn’t be bad with something bigger if we want to have children.’
Children? Had he just said ‘children’? During my single days, I had admittedly gazed with envy at mothers, but since getting together with Sven I felt there was still some time before I became a zombie with dark circles under my eyes telling everyone how fulfilled I now was.
‘I… think we should enjoy our life as a couple a bit longer,’ I said.
‘I am thirty-nine and you are thirty-four. With every year that we wait, the chance of us having difficulty conceiving increases,’ Sven declared.
‘You have a lovely way of trying to convince a woman to have a child,’ I said, trying to smile.
‘Sorry.’ Sven was always quick to say sorry.
‘It’s all right.’
‘But… you do want kids, don’t you?’ he asked.
I didn’t know what to say. Did I really want to have children? My pause was turning into silence.
‘Don’t you Marie?’
As I couldn’t bear to watch this man suffer, I joked: ‘Of course, fifteen of them.’
‘A football team with subs,’ he smiled happily. Then he kissed my neck. That was his preferred way of initiating sex. But it took rather longer than usual to get me in the mood this time.
Chapter Three
‘Sewage plant turns thirty.’
I typed the headline of my new cover story without an ounce of enthusiasm. When I left journalism school, I had still had high hopes of getting a job at a magazine like Der Spiegel, but I would probably have needed better grades for that. So for my first job, I ended up in Munich at Anna, the magazine for the modern woman with an attention span of no more than half a page. It was not my dream job, but on good days I almost felt like Carrie in Sex and the City. All I needed was a five-figure budget for designer clothes and some liposuction.
I might have stayed at Anna forever. But sadly Marc was made editor-in-chief. Sadly he was über-charming. Sadly we became a couple. Sadly he cheated on me with that skinny air hostess, and sadly I didn’t take it quite as brilliantly as I should have. I tried to run him over.
Well, not properly.
But he did have to jump out of the way a little bit.
After this performance I resigned. Between my sub-optimal CV and the dried-up journalism market the only job I could find was at the Malente Post. And that’s only because my father knew the publisher. Returning to my hometown at the age of thirty-one was like running around with a sign that said: ‘Hello. My life is a complete and utter failure.’
The only advantage of working at such a dull place was that I had plenty of time to think about the table plan for the wedding, which people say is a science unto itself. I was particularly concerned about where to position my divorced parents. Just as I was racking my brains about what to do, my father came waltzing into the office and made the whole thing even more complicated. Migraine-inducingly complicated.
‘I really need to tell you something,’ was how he greeted me. I was surprised. He normally looked so pale, but now he almost seemed to be glowing with happiness. He had put on plenty of aftershave and for once the little hair he did have was neatly combed.
‘Dad, can’t this wait?’ I asked. ‘I really don’t have time. I need to write an article about all the things I never wanted to know about disposal of human excrement.’
‘I have a girlfriend,’ he blurted out.
‘Well… that’s… that’s wonderful news!’ I stammered, forgetting all about the excrement.
Dad had a girlfriend. That certainly was a surprise. I tried to imagine who this woman might be. Perhaps an elderly lady from the church choir? Or a patient from his urology clinic (although I didn’t actually want to envisage their first encounter in too much detail).
‘Her name is Svetlana,’ Dad beamed.
‘Svetlana?’ I repeated, and tried to clear my mind of all the prejudices I had against Slavic-sounding female names. ‘Sounds… nice…’
‘She’s not only nice. She’s great,’ he beamed even more.
Oh my God, he was in love! For the first time in more than twenty years. Although I’d always hoped that he would find love, I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to think about it.
‘I’m sure you’ll get on really well with Svetlana,’ Dad said.
‘Oh yeah?’
‘You’re the same age.’
‘What?’
‘Well, almost.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean? Is she forty?’ I asked.
‘No, she’s twenty-five.’
‘She’s what?’
‘Twenty-five.’
‘She’s what?’
‘Twenty-five.’
‘She’s whaaat?’
‘Why do you keep asking that?’
Because my brain was about to go into meltdown at the thought of my father having a twenty-five-year-old girlfriend.
‘So, so where exactly is she from then?’ I asked, trying to keep my cool.
‘Minsk.’
‘Russia?’
‘Belarus,’ he corrected me.
Impatiently, I looked around to see if there were any hidden cameras.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Dad said.
‘That there must be a hidden camera around here somewhere?’
‘OK, I don’t know what you’re thinking.’
‘So what did you think I was thinking,’ I asked.
‘That Svetlana is only interested in my money, because I met her via an online dating agency…’
‘You met here where?’ I interrupted.
‘On www.amore-easterneurope.com.’
‘Oh, www.amore-easterneurope.com. Well, that sounds very reputable.’
‘You’re being sarcastic, aren’t you?’
‘And you are being naive,’ I replied.
‘It has the best ratings on www.onlinedatingagencytest.com,’ he insisted.
‘Well, if www.onlinedatingagency-test.com says so, then Svetlana must be a highly respectable woman, who is neither interested in your money nor German citizenship,’ I quipped.
‘You don’t even know Svetlana!’ Dad was very offended now.
‘And you do?’
‘I was in Minsk last month…’
‘Stop, stop, stop – stop right there!’ I jumped up from my chair and sized up to him. ‘You told me that you went to Jerusalem with the church choir. You were so looking forward to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.’
‘I lied.’
‘You lied to your own daughter?’ I couldn’t believe it.
‘Well, you would have stopped me otherwise.’
‘Yes! At gunpoint.’
Dad sighed. ‘Svetlana really is a delightful creature.’
‘I’m sure she is. ‘
‘But…’
‘No buts! You’re mad to get involved with a woman like that!’
Dad answered sounding sad yet defiant: ‘You just can’t be happy for me.’
That hit me. Of course I wanted him to be happy. Since I was twelve, since the day that Mum had left him, I had wanted to see my Dad happy again.
When he stood in front of me back then, white as a sheet, and explained that Mum had moved out, I couldn’t believe it. I asked him whether there was any chance at all of her coming back.
For a long time he didn’t say anything. In the end, he just shook his head silently. Then he started to cry. It took me a while to realise that my Dad was actually crying. But when he seemed unable to stop, I hugged him. And he cried on my shoulder.
No twelve-year-old should see her father cry like that.
My only thought was: ‘Please God, please make everything be all right and make Mum come back to him.’ But my prayer was not answered. Perhaps God was busy saving some Bangladeshis from a terrible flood.
Now Dad was finally happy again, after all those years. But instead of being happy for him, all I could feel was fear. A fear of seeing him cry again. This Svetlana would surely break his heart.
‘And just so you know, I’m bringing Svetlana to the wedding,’ he said emphatically.
Then he left, slamming the door shut behind him, a little bit too theatrically in my opinion. I stared at the door for a while, until I caught sight of the seating plan again. And then my migraine kicked in.
Chapter Four
Despite what the Reverend Gabriel thought of me, I often prayed to God. And although I did not entirely believe in an Almighty Lord in heaven, I really did hope that he existed. So I prayed during take-offs and landings whenever I was flying with a budget airline. Or just before the lottery numbers were drawn. Or when I wanted the excessively noisy opera tenor in the apartment below us to lose his voice.
Yet most of all I prayed that this Svetlana would not break my father’s heart.
My older sister Kata, who looked rather like an unkempt version of Meg Ryan with her wild blonde hair, thought that my prayers were silly. And she told me so. She had arrived in Malente a week before the wedding, and we were on a run around the lake when she said:
‘Marie. If there is a God, then please explain the existence of Nazis, wars and Bros?’
‘Because he gave people a free will,’ I answered, quoting Gabriel.
‘And why does he give people a free will if they are going to torture each other with it?’
I pondered for a while. Then I admitted defeat. ‘Touché.’
Kata had always been the more clued up one of us. At seventeen, she left school, went to Berlin, came out as a lesbian and started a career as a cartoonist of a daily comic strip in a national newspaper. It was called ‘Sisters’. It was about two sisters. It was about us.
Kata was also much fitter than me. She didn’t get out of breath at all, whereas I on the other hand, had stopped thinking that the lake was beautiful after only eight hundred metres.
‘Shall we stop running?’ she suggested.
‘I still… need to lose… half a stone before the wedding,’ I gasped.
‘You’ll still weigh 11 stone,’ she grinned.
‘No one likes skinny smartarses,’ I panted.
‘Well, I think it’s nice for Dad to have sex after twenty years of celibacy.’ Kata brought the conversation back to www.amore-easterneurope.com.
Dad had sex?
This was a thought that I would rather have been spared, but much to my horror I now had a very vivid image in my mind.
‘I’m sure it makes him happy and…’
Kata didn’t get any further. I covered my ears with my hands and began to sing. ‘La la la, I don’t want to hear that. La la la, I really don’t care.’
Kata stopped talking. I uncovered my ears.
‘Although men like Dad,’ Kata cheerily started telling me, ‘who haven’t been in a relationship for a long time, probably do visit prostitutes once in a while…’
I covered my ears again and sang as loudly as I could. ‘La la la, if you carry on talking, I’ll hit you…’
Kata smiled. ‘I’m always amazed at how mature you are.’
I was far too out of breath to be able to respond, and collapsed onto a nearby bench under a chestnut tree.
‘And I’m always amazed at how fit you are,’ Kata added.
I threw a conker at her head.
Kata just grinned. Her pain threshold was far superior to mine. While I moan when I tear a toenail, she didn’t even complain when she found out she had a brain tumour about five years ago. Or, as she put it, when she was given the opportunity to find out who her real friends were.
When she was ill, I jumped on a plane to Berlin every weekend to go and visit her in hospital. It was hard to watch my sister suffer like that; she couldn’t even sleep properly because of the pain. The tablets did little to ease her suffering. Neither did the infusions. And the chemotherapy turned my strong sister into a skinny, bald creature, who covered her head with a tongue-in-cheek skull-print scarf. It made her look as though she belonged aboard the Black Pearl with Jack Sparrow. After six weeks I started wondering why her girlfriend Lisa no longer came to visit.
Kata just said, ‘We broke up.’
I was shocked. ‘Why?’
‘We had different interests,’ Kata replied.
‘What?’ I asked, sounding confused.
A wry smile crossed her face. ‘She enjoys nightlife. I am busy puking because of chemo.’
My sister was determined to beat the tumour. When I asked her where she got her tremendous strength from, she answered: ‘I don’t have a choice. You know I don’t believe in life after death.’
But I prayed for Kata – without telling her, of course. That would just have annoyed her.
Now she’d almost done it. If she didn’t have any relapses in the next few months, she would still have a long life ahead of her. And I would finally know whether God had answered my prayers. Because that had to be within his remit. A tumour surely had little to do with human free will.
‘What are you thinking about so seriously?’ Kata asked. I was not in the mood to start talking about the tumour. Kata – understandably – couldn’t stand the fact that her illness always made me sadder than it made her. I got up from the bench and started to make my way back home.
‘Aren’t we going to run any further?’ Kata asked.
‘I’d rather go on a diet.’
‘Why do you want to lose weight at all?’ she asked. ‘You’ve always told me that Sven loves you just the way you are.’
‘Sven does. I don’t,’ I answered.
‘And are you planning to have children soon?’ Kata asked casually.
‘There’s still plenty of time for that,’ I replied.
Kata looked at me like she always did when she was trying to make a point.
‘Look! There’s a black swan over there,’ I tried, not particularly well, to change the subject.
‘When you were together with Marc you always wanted to have children,’ Kata pointed out, who incidentally never let me change the subject when I wanted to.
‘Sven is not like Marc.’
‘That’s why I’m asking,’ Kata said earnestly. ‘You loved Marc so much that you announced the names of your two future children after just two weeks! Mareike and…’
‘…Maja,’ I added quietly. I’d always wanted to have two daughters, who would have a great relationship just like Kata and me.
‘So what about Mareike and Maja now?’ Kata asked.
‘I want to enjoy our time as a couple,’ I said. ‘Those little ankle-biters will have to wait before they can start annoying me.’
‘Does it have anything to do with Sven?’ Kata was not letting it go.
‘No!’
‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks.’ Kata grinned, but then stopped quizzing me any further. I wondered whether I had in fact been protesting a bit too much. Maybe I didn’t want to have children.
Chapter Five
Meanwhile…
As Marie and Kata were distancing themselves from the lake, the black swan swam to the shore. From there he waddled over the pebbles to the path, shook his damp feathers and… turned into George Clooney.
Clooney ran his hands through his shiny hair, straightened his elegant designer suit and sat down on the shaded bench, on which the two sisters had recently been taking a breather. He sat there for a while, waiting for something. Or someone. As he sat there, he threw conkers at some of the ducks in the lake. They were knocked out and drowned. But even this little bit of fun did not bring the man any pleasure. He was tired. Very tired. He was suffering from burnout. This damn century!
Before things had been all right. But since, no matter how hard he tried, people were simply much, much better at creating their own hell on earth – and he was Satan!
He had of course come up with quite a few good ideas about how to torture people: neoliberalism, reality TV, Bros (he was particularly proud of the song When Will I Be Famous?). But in general, he was no match for human beings. They were far too creative with their stupid free will.
‘Long time no see,’ he suddenly heard a voice behind him.
Satan turned around and saw the Reverend Gabriel.
‘It’s been almost exactly six thousand years,’ Satan replied. ‘Since the Man upstairs threw me out of heaven. Or rather, down from heaven.’
Gabriel nodded. ‘Those were the days.’
‘Yes, they were,’ Satan nodded.
They smiled at each other like two men who used to be friends, and who deeply regretted that they now weren’t.
‘You look tired,’ Satan said to Gabriel.
‘Thanks. Ditto,’ Gabriel replied.
Then they smiled at each other even more.
‘So, what’s this meeting all about?’ Satan wanted to know.
‘God wants me to tell you something,’ Gabriel replied.
‘And what’s that?’
‘The Day of Judgement is upon us.’
Satan thought for a while, and then breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Well, it was about time.’
Chapter Six
Our wedding began as most weddings do – with the bride having a minor nervous breakdown. I stood outside the church door. The guests were waiting for my performance. Everything was actually almost as perfect as I had always hoped it would be. The pews were filled. Soon everyone would be admiring my wonderful white dress that I knew fitted me like a glove, as I had indeed managed to starve off half a stone. I would be giving my vows in this romantic ecclesiastical setting. Everything was indeed almost perfect. There was only one problem: my Dad no longer wanted to walk me down the aisle.
‘You really shouldn’t have shouted at Svetlana like that,’ Kata said.
‘I didn’t shout at her,’ I replied with tears in my eyes.
‘You called her a “vodka-whore”.’
‘OK, maybe I was a bit harsh,’ I admitted.
Before I got into the carriage to go to the church, I had been determined to act completely cool during my first meeting with Svetlana. But when I actually met this heavily made-up yet pretty, petite woman, it was clear to me that she would break my Dad’s heart. A young thing like that couldn’t possibly have fallen in love with him! In my mind’s eye I saw my Dad crying in my arms again. And as I couldn’t stand the thought of this, I asked Svetlana to bugger off back to Belarus, or just to keep going all the way to Siberia. That made Dad angry. He shouted at me. I tried to explain to him that he was just being used. He shouted at me even more. Then I lost it. When I lost it, he lost it too. And that’s when phrases like ‘vodka-whore’, ‘ungrateful daughter’ and ‘Viagra-Dad’ were thrown into the ring.
Why do you always hurt the people you are trying to protect from themselves?
‘Come on,’ Kata said, drying my tears and grabbing my hand. ‘I’ll walk you in.’
She opened the door for me. The organ started to play. Holding on to my beloved sister, I stepped into the church with as much dignity as I could muster and made my way towards the altar. Most of the people there had been invited by Sven. Many of them were related to him and the others were friends from the football club, his colleagues from the hospital, people from the neighbourhood… Well, half of Malente was either related to or friends with Sven. I didn’t have nearly as many friends. Actually, I only had one real friend, and he was sitting in row number five. Michi was a skinny, scrawny fellow, with dishevelled hair, and he was wearing a T-shirt that said, ‘Beauty is totally overrated’.
We’d known each other since school. At that time he was part of a truly freaky minority – he was a Catholic altar boy.
Even today, Michi was the only really religious person I knew. He read the Bible every day. He’d once said: ‘Marie. What’s written in the Bible must be true. Those stories are far too crazy for anyone to have made them up.’
Michi nodded at me encouragingly and I was able to smile again. In row three I spotted my father, and immediately stopped smiling. He was still angry with me, while Svetlana was nervously staring at the floor, probably wondering how we Germans defined hospitality. And kinship.
My mother was sitting in row one, deliberately far from my father. With her short, dyed red hair she looked a bit like a trade union boss. She seemed much more lively than back then, when she’d sat at the breakfast table in her blue dressing gown with a tired expression and told me and Kata: ‘I’m leaving your father.’
Mum had tried to explain to us children as gently as possible that she hadn’t loved Dad for a long time, and that she’d only stayed with him because of us and that she simply couldn’t carry on living a lie.
Today I know that it was the right decision. She had been able to realise her dream of studying psychology, something that Dad had always opposed. She now lived in Hamburg and had her own practice specialising in relationship counselling (of all things), and she was much, much more confident than ever before. Nevertheless, a part of me still wished that Mum had carried on living that lie.
‘Marriage is difficult,’ the Reverend Gabriel declared during the sermon in a resounding tone. ‘But everything else is even more difficult.’
It was not exactly a ‘what-a-wonderful-day-let’s-rejoice’ kind of sermon. But I suppose that not much more was to be expected of him. I was of course relieved that he hadn’t spoken about ‘people who use my church to stage events’.
Sven stared at me throughout the sermon, completely overjoyed. So overjoyed that I couldn’t stand not being as overjoyed as he was, even though I really did want to be overjoyed. It was probably just because I was still so shaken after my argument with Dad.
I did my best to beam now as well. But the more I tried, the tenser I became. Racked with guilt, I couldn’t even look at Sven. I scanned the church and caught sight of a crucifix. At first, stupid sayings came to my head from our confirmation time. ‘Hey Jesus! What are you doing here?’ – ‘Oh, Paul. I’m just hanging around.’
But then I looked at the red marks on his hands, where the nails had been hammered through. I shuddered. Crucifixion. What kind of brutal thing was that? Who had even thought of doing it, something so incred-ibly horrific? Whoever it was must have had a really awful childhood.
And Jesus? Well, he knew what was coming to him. Why did he allow himself to be subjected to that? Of course, to absolve us of our sins. That was an impressive sacrifice for humanity. But did Jesus even have a choice? Was he able to choose whether or not to sacrifice himself? It was his destiny – right from the moment he was born, wasn’t it? That’s what his father had sent him down to earth for. But what kind of a father demands that kind of a sacrifice from his son? And what would Super Nanny have said about that father? Most likely: ‘Go and sit on the naughty step.’
Suddenly I got scared. It was probably not a very good idea to criticise God in church. Especially not at your own wedding.
I’m sorry, God, I said in my head. It’s just that – did Jesus have to endure such a painful death? Was that really necessary? I mean, couldn’t he have died from something other than crucifixion? Something more humane? What about a sleeping potion?
But then, I started thinking to myself, there would have been drinking cups hanging about in churches instead of crucifixes…
‘Marie!’ the Reverend Gabriel said in a penetrating voice.
I jumped. ‘Yes! Here I am.’
‘I asked you a question,’ he said.
‘Yes, yes… I heard,’ I fibbed in a fluster.
‘And so maybe you would like to answer?’
‘Well, yes. Why not?’
I glanced over at a nervous-looking Sven. Then I looked into the nave and saw lots of confused eyes and wondered how I could get myself out of this situation. But I couldn’t think of anything.
‘Erm, what was the question again?’ I anxiously looked at Gabriel again.
‘If you want to marry Sven.’
I was having hot and cold flushes. It was one of those moments where you want to fall into a spontaneous coma.
Half of the church was laughing. The other half was appalled. And Sven’s nervous smile turned into a scowl.
‘Sorry. It was just a little joke,’ Gabriel explained.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
‘I just asked whether you were ready for your vows.’
‘I’m sorry. I was miles away,’ I said sheepishly.
‘And what were you thinking about?’
‘About Jesus,’ I answered honestly, keeping the details to myself.
Gabriel was satisfied with my answer, as were the guests, and Sven was smiling and looked relieved. So it seemed that not listening to the vicar during your own wedding because of Jesus was actually OK.
‘So shall we start with the vows?’ Gabriel asked, and I nodded.
Suddenly, the whole church fell silent.
Gabriel turned to Sven: ‘Sven Harder, do you take Marie Woodward to be your wife? Will you love her, cherish and honour her, share with her in joy and sorrow and be faithful to her as long as you both shall live?’
Sven had tears in his eyes. ‘I will.’
It was unbelievable. There really was a man who wanted to marry me. Who’d have thought it?
Then Gabriel turned to me. I became extremely nervous. My legs were shaking and I started feeling queasy.
‘Marie Woodward, do you take Sven Harder to be your husband, will you love him, cherish and honour him, share with him in joy and sorrow and be faithful to him as long as you both shall live?’
I was quite aware that I should have said ‘I will’ at this point. But it suddenly dawned on me that ‘as long as you both shall live’ was actually a long time. An extremely long time. That’s probably something that dated back to a time when Christians had an average life expectancy of thirty, before they died in their mud huts or they were gobbled up by lions in the Colosseum. But nowadays people have an average life expectancy of eighty or ninety years. If medical science carried on like this, people might even live to be 120. But, having said that, I didn’t have private health insurance, so I would probably only reach eighty or ninety. But that was still old enough…
‘Hmm!’ Gabriel cleared his throat, urging me to answer.
I tried, with a little sob, to win some time by getting people to think that I couldn’t speak, because I was getting emotional. My gaze was now firmly focused on the door. I remembered The Graduate, when Dustin Hoffman steals the bride away from the church, and wondered if Marc had got wind of my wedding, driven to Malente and would speed through the door at any moment… That I had started thinking about Marc at this point was not a great sign.
‘Marie. This is the moment when you should say “I will”,’ the Reverend Gabriel explained, sounding slightly pushy.
As if I didn’t know that!
Sven was biting his lips nervously.
I spotted my mother in the crowd and asked myself whether I’d end up like she did with Sven? Would I also sit my daughters down at the breakfast table at some point and announce: ‘Sorry Mareike and Maja, but I haven’t loved your father for years’?
‘Marie! Please answer,’ Gabriel urged me. The only thing that could now be heard in the church was my noisy stomach.
‘Marie…’ Sven begged. He was beginning to panic.
I thought about the tears of my unborn daughter. And then I suddenly knew why I didn’t want to have children with Sven.
I loved him. But not enough for a whole lifetime.
But what would hurt him more? Saying ‘no’ now or divorcing him later?
Chapter Seven
‘What have I done? What have I done?’ I wailed as I sat on the cold floor of the ladies’ loo at the church.
‘You said “no”,’ replied Kata, who was sitting next to me, making sure that the tear-saturated loo paper ended up in the sanitary bin.
‘I know what I said!’ I wept.
‘It was the right thing to do. It was brave and very honest!’ Kata comforted me and tore off some more loo paper. ‘Not many people have that kind of courage. Most people in your shoes would probably have said “Yes” and made a massive mistake. OK, perhaps you could have chosen a slightly better moment to dump him…’
‘Have the guests already left?’ I asked.
‘Yes. And the children will probably be traumatised for the rest of their lives when it comes to marriage,’ Kata smiled kindly.
‘What… what about Sven?’
