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- Herausgeber: Orenda Books
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
An extraordinary bond develops between an angry teenage runaway and a middle-aged woman running a large farm on her own, as they work the land and slowly heal … the sublime, achingly beautiful debut that everyone is talking about…`Such a timely tale … hopeful and poignant and lyrically told. A truly compassionate and heartening book´ Culturefly`Poetic in places and, as the title suggests, highly sensory … a genuinely hopeful and open-hearted novel´ Irish Times`Tasting Sunlight reminded me of reading Sally Rooney's Normal People. It takes a writer of immeasurable talent to make you feel that intensely, merely by evoking ripening late summer fruit and the sound of rain on dusty ground´ Elizabeth Haynes`Powerful, original and engaging. I loved it´ Susie Boyt***Over 600,000 copies sold in Germany******THREE YEARS on the German Bestseller List***_________________Teenager Sally has just run away from a clinic where she is being treated for anorexia. She's furious with everything and everyone, and wants to be left in peace.Liss is in her forties, living alone on a large farm that she runs single-handedly. She has little contact with the outside world, and no need for other people.From their first meeting, Sally realises that Liss isn't like other adults; she expects nothing of Sally and simply accepts who she is, offering her a bed for the night with no questions asked.That night becomes weeks and then months, as an unlikely friendship develops and these two damaged women slowly open up – connecting to each other, reconnecting with themselves, and facing the darkness in their pasts through their shared work on the land.Achingly beautiful, profound, invigorating and uplifting, Tasting Sunlight is a story of friendship across generations, of love and acceptance, of the power of nature to heal and transform, and the goodness that surrounds us, if only we take time to see it…______________`A subtle, beautiful, luminous novel about the healing powers of nature, friendship and acceptance' Saga magazine`Written with beautiful simplicity, this sensitive and profound story examines how we heal and help each other, delivered with deep insight and huge heart´ Doug Johnstone`A sensory joy; a novel of quiet, understated beauty … Original, luminous and intense, it's a mesmerising read´ Iona Gray`A stupendous debut. A triumph. Don't miss it´ Louisa Treger`A truly special book. Powerful, lyrical and profoundly affecting, Ewald Arenz spins a tale of friendship, restoration and possibility, with utmost heart and care. I loved it! ´ Miranda Dickinson`An exquisitely written, heart-warming story … the smells, tastes, sounds and rhythms of nature are described with sensuous clarity, so you feel as if you are there, picking potatoes from the earth, tending the bees, and tasting the pears. Just beautiful!´ Gill Paul`Told with honesty and a clear-sighted understanding of human nature … I loved it´ Michael J. Malone`The simple minutiae of everyday life becomes intricate and essential: rituals that connect one woman to the land and her heritage, and show a lost, younger one a different truth. Moving and heart-wrenching, but ultimately uplifting´ Carol Lovekin`Breathtakingly beautiful´ Louise Beech`A simply wonderful, heartwarming read…´ Fiona Sharp, BooksellerWhat readers are saying…`A story that breaks your heart, and fills it too´ Bookly Matters`The perfect story for our time … uplifting, healing and truly exceptional´ Random Things through My Letterbox`Poignantly, gently and profoundly evocative´ TripFiction`Beautiful, at times brutal, and honest … I absolutely loved it´ Claire Clarke`A special, beautiful novel' Café Thinking'An absolute joy´ Danielle Louise`It touched my soul´ Live & Deadly
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Teenager Sally has just run away from a clinic where she is being treated for anorexia. She’s furious with everything and everyone, and wants to be left in peace.
Liss is in her forties, living alone on a large farm that she runs single-handedly. She has little contact with the outside world, and no need for other people.
From their first meeting, Sally realises that Liss isn’t like other adults; she expects nothing of Sally and simply accepts who she is, offering her a bed for the night with no questions asked.
That night becomes weeks and then months, as an unlikely friendship develops and these two damaged women slowly open up – connecting to each other, reconnecting with themselves, and facing the darkness in their pasts through their shared work on the land.
Achingly beautiful, profound, invigorating and uplifting, Tasting Sunlight is a story of friendship across generations, of love and acceptance, of the power of nature to heal and transform, and the goodness that surrounds us, if only we take time to see it…
Tasting Sunlight
EWALD ARENZ Translated by Rachel Ward
Contents
1 September
At the top of the ridge, the air was shimmering over the asphalt. To Liss, as she drove the old, open-top tractor slowly up the narrow lane through the fields and vineyards, it looked like water that was more liquid than ordinary water; lighter and more agile. You could drink it only with your eyes.
The fields glinted with stubble after the harvest, yet the wheat was still present in the overwhelming scent of straw; dusty, yellow, sated. The maize was starting to dry, and the rustle of it in the gentle summer breeze no longer sounded green; it was turning hoarse and whispery around the edges.
The afternoon was hot and the sky was high, but when you switched off the engine, you could suddenly hear that there were fewer bird voices now and that the chirping of the crickets had grown louder. Liss could see and smell and hear that the summer was coming to its end.
It was a good feeling.
Nobody was running after her. Nobody was following her. Nobody had got into a car to drive slowly down the country lanes along which she’d been walking for two hours now, climbing steadily for the last forty-five minutes. And, frankly, why should they? It wasn’t like she had to report in somewhere on the hour. Although, she’d had that experience.
Sally stopped and turned around. The crappy countryside lay spread out beneath her in the sun. Ten thousand fields with whatever in them, while far off on the horizon, dim in a hazy summer smog, lay the city with the clinic on its outskirts. Such a lovely, leafy location. With an avenue. A proper tree-lined avenue, right up to the gate. The avenue had been kind of important to Mama. As if the trees were some sort of guarantee that she’d be especially well looked after there.
She sat in the grass at the edge of the farm track. It wasn’t a proper road, just concrete slabs, each of which was precisely eight and a half steps long. She’d counted the steps because it was important not to step on the cracks. And now she sat down on the side of the road, pulled up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. It was hot. She’d hitched a few kilometres, but the guy who’d picked her up had been an idiot arsehole. He’d gone on at her the whole time. One question after another, plus you could hear the ones he wasn’t asking out loud: Where’ve you come from? What’s your name? What are you doing? Are you going home? Still the summer holidays? Am I a stupid, moronic arsehole? Do I pick up hitchhiking girls because I think I’m the caring, sharing type, when really I just want to drive them somewhere for a quick shag? What’s your name then? Spit it out.
At some point she’d just reached for the handbrake and pulled it up. And got out. She didn’t need that shit. Not today. Not ever, actually. And anyway, it was better to walk. Climb the hill, even though it was so fucking hot.
Fucking hot. Fucking hot. Sally repeated the phrase to herself, just to hear her own voice, which had dried out in the hot air. She pulled her water bottle from her rucksack. It was almost empty. There was a scattering of apple trees across the slope beside her, with masses of apples that might have quenched her thirst, but she wasn’t falling for that. Eating wasn’t a thing today. It really wasn’t. She hated having to eat when other people said so, or because it was just the thing to do. To eat because it was morning. Or midday. Or evening. Or because you were hungry. She wanted to eat when she wanted to eat. She wanted to drink when she wanted to drink. Nobody understood that.
She took the last two swigs of the lukewarm water and screwed the lid back on the empty bottle. At the top of the hill was a village. She was sure she’d be able to fill it up there somewhere. And if she couldn’t, she couldn’t.
She got to her feet to carry on up the slope. It wasn’t late yet. Once she’d put the village behind her, she’d be able to look out for somewhere to sleep. It was still warm and she had … It was only now that Sally realised she’d never slept in the open air. In a tent, sure; back in the day, they’d gone to the same campsite in Italy year after year. With ten thousand other families who were all spending Whitsun in Italy too. What great parents she had – so imaginative. On the other hand … sleeping in the open air was probably another of those things that sounded more romantic than it actually was. You’d most likely get ants crawling in your ears and up your nose. And then there were ticks. Maybe she’d find a barn or something.
The farm track came out onto the village high street, which was much steeper than she’d expected and ran past a few farm houses for one or two hundred metres or so to the main road. Ten minutes later, she was finally at the top, and she stopped for a moment to get her bearings. The village wasn’t very big; from where she was standing, it was only a few steps to the edge of the place. She could see a long way over the countryside. There were wind turbines standing in loose ranks in the fields; their blades turned unhurriedly in a late-summer wind that she could barely feel from down here on the ground. Thank God for the wind turbines. Everything was so fucking idyllic, it was all she could do not to scream. She longed to crouch down and piss all over the middle of the road. Just to make something dirty.
She should have headed back to the city centre. But it was always crawling with police. And she didn’t feel like being around anyone she knew. She hadn’t felt like being around people she knew for ages.
Just before the village sign, she passed a front garden where a lawn sprinkler was throwing tired jets of water over the flowerbeds. Without looking around, Sally climbed over the fence, pulled the hose off the sprinkler and filled her bottle. When it was full, she drank a few more swigs straight from the hose, threw it onto the lawn and jumped back over the fence onto the road.
Liss had uncoupled the trailer because you couldn’t turn the tractor on the narrow path between the vines with it hitched to the back. It was more practical to unhook it and manoeuvre it around by hand. But as she’d turned it round, one of the front wheels had slipped into the gully between the track and the field, and now the drawbar was at such an awkward angle between the vines, she couldn’t get the tractor close enough to hitch it back on and pull the trailer free. The wheel was slotted perfectly into the gully, and that meant she couldn’t shift the shaft any further. The trailer wasn’t too big for her to move it on a flat road, but she’d need more than just physical strength to get it out of the gully. Suddenly, she didn’t know why, she found herself thinking about Sonny. About the young Sonny from the old days, not the other one. He’d liked this kind of thing because he took such pleasure in his own strength. If something like this had happened, to the camper perhaps, he’d have jumped down into the ditch and braced himself against the van; she’d have put her foot down a bit until it got free again, Sonny pushing with all his strength.
Free.
Liss heard the word echoing in her head and straightened up, blinked involuntarily then looked down. The shadows of the vine leaves were sharp, their edges clearly defined against the pale concrete of the path, but blue around the edges. When she looked up again, she had to shield her eyes from the now slanting sun. It was a wide landscape. The river lay like a belt, glittering as far as the eye could see. She was free, she told herself. She could go wherever she liked. She gave the stuck trailer another tug, pulled with all her might. Then she saw the girl coming up the farm track.
Sally didn’t notice the woman until she straightened up. Tall. Slim. Wearing a blue … what was that? A work dress? It looked a bit like those overall things … what were they called? Like a boiler suit. A boiler dress. And she was wearing a headscarf too. Countryside clothes. Super fashionable.
Really, she’d have preferred to dodge through the vines to avoid her, but that would’ve looked kind of weird, because the woman had now seen her. Sally walked a little faster when she realised the woman was looking at her. And in such an odd way. Not curious. Just … the way you might study an animal – a beetle running over the road. One of the ones that shimmered in that gorgeous shade of green-gold but were actually dung beetles. Because that was how things were: if it looked like gold, it lived off shit. She squeezed past the trailer that was slung diagonally across the path and, despite herself, lowered her head a little as she walked past the woman.
‘Can you just grab hold of this a moment?’
The question was so unexpected that Sally jumped. Yet it had been asked perfectly calmly, like a genuine request, without making any demands. It wasn’t hiding an order like such questions normally did. ‘Would you give me a hand?’ ‘Would you like a bite to eat?’ Would you pass me the water, please?’ The type of shitty question where the honest answer was: No. I wouldn’t like to. I’m only doing this because you’re stronger than me. Because you have all the say. Because, for whatever reason, you can make me do things. But: No! I don’t want to. Don’t even ask me. Don’t act like I have a choice. Just issue commands. Say: Sally, you little shit, help me. Sally, I can’t stand you, I hate you and your parents because I’m working in this crappy clinic earning half what your father earns, but I get to make you eat. Sally, Sally, Sally, Sally, Sally, pass me the fucking water, you little bitch. But none of you dare say that.
‘Can you just grab hold of this a moment?’
It was a genuine question. A question that could be answered with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. She had stopped, but now she turned around and looked at the tall woman. And the trailer with one of its wheels stuck in the ditch.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Shall I push?’
The woman eyed her briefly, but she didn’t say that Sally was too thin, too skinny. She didn’t use any of the words that the others used in order to avoid saying what they meant.
‘Are you strong?’ she enquired calmly.
Another question Sally hadn’t been expecting. Nobody had ever asked her that before. In her whole amazing, awesome, wonderful life. What kind of woman was this?
‘Kinda.’
‘OK, then you keep pulling the drawbar round to the left. I’ll try to rock it out.’
The woman had gone behind the trailer and leant her back against the trailer’s tailgate before she noticed that nothing was happening up at the front. She turned to Sally and, after briefly giving her another of those funny looks, she pointed to the forked piece of metal with a hole in it.
‘That’s the drawbar.’
Then she turned away again, braced her back against the trailer and began to rock. Sally picked up the drawbar. After a while she started to feel the rhythm and could pull when the woman pushed, push when she let go. The wheel was rocking ever more violently up and down the walls of the ditch, and then, all of a sudden, the trailer came free and Sally had to stumble forward to stop herself falling.
The woman had her hands firmly on the tailgate and was keeping the trailer on the road. She was smiling almost imperceptibly.
‘Thanks.’
Sally nodded.
‘Can you drive a tractor?’ the woman asked. Sally, instantly furious at the stupidity of the question, turned on her.
‘Do I look like I can drive a tractor?’ she snapped. ‘Do I look like I’ve got a driving licence? Do I fucking look eighteen?’
The woman had stopped smiling and was looking at her again, as if her gaze came from the sea or across the mountains; at any rate from somewhere miles away.
‘That isn’t what I asked,’ she replied, as matter-of-fact as if they had been real questions; and calm, unreproachful, ‘but it doesn’t matter. Could you get me two stones and put them under the front wheels? Not too small, please.’
Sally hesitated. This woman wasn’t giving off that social-worker calm that they all had in the clinic. She wasn’t wearing that none-of-this-fazes-me face that they all put on if you yelled at them or insulted them, or just said nothing. That face that you longed to spit in.
She walked to the ditch and looked around. There were lumps of stone everywhere, as if someone had piled them there on the edge. OK, someone probably had. Picked them out of the vineyard to get them out of the way. She chose one: triangular, like a wedge, dusty white, warm from the sun. The broken edges felt good, almost sharp. She pushed the stone under the first wheel, while the woman stood patiently holding the trailer and looking at her. Sally hurried with the next stone.
‘OK?’ she asked.
The tall woman took her hands off the tailgate.
‘OK,’ she answered. ‘Thanks.’
She walked over to her tractor, reached into the engine and pressed something. Sally heard the engine turn over, incredibly slowly. Like an old man taking his first few steps after waking up, hesitant, as if he were about to fall. It sounded as though someone needed to give the tractor a pat on the back. But then the motor picked up speed and suddenly it was ticking along evenly. The woman got aboard and reversed the tractor so skilfully that the drawbar was almost touching the coupler. Sally found herself reaching for the shaft and lifting it.
‘Bit further,’ she shouted over the noise of the diesel engine. The woman let the tractor roll ten centimetres further back and the drawbar hitched itself up. Sally saw the small iron rod that hung on a thin chain from the coupler, took it and shoved it through the lugs. She looked up to the woman on the tractor, who’d turned in her seat to face her and was now putting her thumb up.
‘The locking pin too,’ she called.
Sally bent and saw the little pin that had to be shoved through a small hole in the bar to stop it slipping out of the drawbar. It looked a bit like a clumsy hairgrip. She stuck it through and then stepped back onto the path between the trailer and tractor. The tractor jerked, the woman raised her hand as if in farewell, and Sally picked up her rucksack again. A little dust whirled up as the tractor chugged its way further uphill between the vines. Sally followed slowly. There were grapes on the vines. Much smaller than the ones she knew from home. Dark blue with a white film. She picked one and popped it in her mouth. One would be OK, but definitely not … It wasn’t properly sweet. You could taste that it wasn’t ripe, but it wasn’t like an unripe apple. The flavour was already there. She spat out the skin and walked on. She didn’t notice for a while that the tractor had stopped again, a couple of hundred metres ahead. She heard the engine running and saw the woman on the seat. What did she want? She walked a little faster, wondering again if she should walk through the vineyard, go cross-country, but then she felt annoyed with herself. What was this about? The woman didn’t even know her. When she passed the idling tractor, she saw that the woman had rolled a cigarette. She half turned to Sally and said, just loud enough to be heard over the engine:
‘If you like, you can stay on my farm.’
Sally’s first impulse was to act like she hadn’t heard her. How did she know she wasn’t walking home? Her second was to run away. She looked up at the tractor. The woman had struck a match and was lighting the cigarette. Only after that did she glance down at Sally again.
Stuff it, thought Sally. Stuff it. She threw her rucksack into the trailer, climbed on one of the tyres and swung herself over the tail lift. She didn’t sit with the woman on the tractor. From here, she could always jump down again.
The woman took her foot off the brake and breathed out smoke. The tractor coughed out smoke. Sally sat on the bottom of the trailer, her back to them both, pulled up her legs and watched as the village behind her grew fuzzy in the shimmering air and then disappeared. It’d be great to dissolve like that, she thought, vanish into hot air and light.
2 September
It was just before half past ten when Sally emerged from the room Liss had given her and walked into the kitchen. Nothing special. Sink, cupboards, fridge – furniture you’d forget the moment you left the room, Sally thought. But where there had once been a window onto the farmyard, there was now a glass patio door. It was ajar. A bright strip of sunlight lay slanting across the tiled floor. Standing on the table were a plate, a cup and a covered bowl. A teapot beside them. Everything looked clean and tidy. Sally sat down on the bench along the wall, from where you could see through the door out into the yard. She took the plate off the bowl. Small pieces of fruit. Apple. Pear. Kiwi. A few nuts mixed in. And honey. You could smell it. Hesitantly, she covered the bowl again and touched the teapot with the back of her hand. It was lukewarm. Sally poured herself a cup. To her relief, it was black tea. Why was one of the fundamental principles of every bloody clinic in the world that they only ever had a load of herbal teas? Everything always smelt of camomile and peppermint. Even if you got hold of other teabags from somewhere, the tea would still taste of camomile and peppermint. The taste wormed its way in everywhere. The clinic crockery was so steeped in it, whatever you brewed automatically turned into peppermint or camomile tea.
She found herself laughing at the idea, and almost jumped because it was such an unfamiliar sound.
She took the plate off the bowl again, fished out a piece of pear with her fingers and popped it into her mouth. It tasted sweet and had a mild spice that Sally didn’t recognise. She wondered whether it was in the pear, or whether Liss had spiced the fruit salad. She took a piece of apple. It tasted completely different, so she tried the pear again. Perhaps it was just that she hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning, but the pear tasted special. She picked out a walnut. That simply tasted of walnut and honey. Sally drank a sip of lukewarm tea. She liked the way the bitterness first mingled with the taste of honey and then turned clear and tart in her mouth. Hastily, she covered the bowl again and stood up. She took the cup with her as she stepped through the French window into the yard. The tractor was gone, but the trailer was standing half in and half out of the barn door, just where they’d uncoupled it yesterday. Sally wandered across the yard. She hadn’t been able to look around yesterday. Liss had shown her where she could sleep – it wasn’t until they were standing in the spartan room that she’d told Sally her name. Sally hadn’t answered and only later, when she’d come back down into the kitchen, had she introduced herself to Liss in return. Liss had nodded, but not with the satisfaction that other adults so often showed, which left no doubt that they’d been waiting for her finally to come to her senses, finally to see that she’d done, acted, been wrong, for her finally to cave give in come crawling back. That nod that was always like hoisting a flag, like a trumpet proclaiming victory. The nod that was meant to look understanding and yet always hid a very slow whiplash.
Sally set one foot on the drawbar and drank another sip of tea. Liss was funny. She’d never met anyone like her. What kind of woman was she? The house was far too big for her, but Sally had sensed immediately that she lived alone here. You could tell whether or not a house was lived in. And this house was big and empty. The room she’d slept in hadn’t been used for a long time.
Sally did a lap of the barn. It was so beautifully dark on this bright September morning. A row of agricultural machines stood there in the dim light; she hardly recognised any of them. What did Liss do? Was she a farmer? What was she doing on her own on such a big farm? Sally looked up. Above her, light shimmered through the cracks in the wooden ceiling. There were no steps up to the hayloft, only a ladder. She put the cup down on one of the machines and climbed up. As she rose through the hatch, she saw to her surprise how much brighter it was up here. There were glass tiles in the roof, at regular intervals. Only the gable walls had proper windows. Perhaps it was down to the clear September day and the height of the sun, but the huge loft looked friendly and quiet. The dust fell so slowly through the beams of sunlight that it seemed almost to stand still. You had to look very closely to notice that it was falling, incessantly falling. There was a large heap of hay across the back third of the loft. Cords were hanging from the beams and above the hatch was a large wooden wheel, running over which was another rope, its long end lying in large coils beside the hatch. It was a good place. For the first time in a long time, everything within Sally fell perfectly quiet, and she stood still so as not to immediately lose that quietness again. She watched the dust in the light and felt the same way: as if she were falling very slowly; so slowly that there was no need to fear the impact.
A while later, she climbed down again, picked up her cup and roamed across the farmyard, past the empty stable, along the path into the garden, past a hen house, past round woodpiles among which the hens were pecking, past an ancient privy that was leaning against an empty rabbit hutch. The garden itself was more of an elongated meadow – as large as a field. Part of it was fenced in and laid out for vegetables. Sally wondered at first why you’d put up a fence in your own garden, but then she remembered the hens. Opposite the vegetable garden was a low, windowless building with wide sliding doors. Sally pulled at one and saw that it was a machine shed. There was a second ancient tractor, a plough and a few other pieces of equipment whose function was equally mysterious; there was a pile of sacks, and then there was a motorbike. Curious, she walked over. She’d ridden a motorbike once, illegally, of course. Sally swung herself onto the seat and tried the kick starter. The engine didn’t start. She tried it again, and, now becoming absorbed in what she was doing, kicked down once more on the starter. Nothing happened. She kicked it until a cramp shot down her calf and she had to jump up to stretch her leg. Furiously, she kicked at the motorbike; it fell over. What was she doing here anyway? What kind of insane game was she playing here?
She ran out of the building, down the path out of the garden and into the yard, ran through the kitchen into the house, then up the stairs into the room she’d slept in. She grabbed the rucksack from the chair, felt automatically for her phone, remembering almost simultaneously where she’d left it: jammed behind the back of her wardrobe in the clinic. Switched off. According to her phone, she was still there. She pulled a face. She was free. Nobody knew where she was. She could go wherever she wanted. She threw on the rucksack and went down the stairs. In the kitchen, she stopped. Wonderful. The question now was, where did she actually want to go?
‘Away isn’t a direction, huh?’ she asked aloud. The door was open. The kitchen was empty. The strip of sunlight had flitted past the table and was now lying kind of in the doorway. The sun was at its noonday height, and its light was leaving the room. For the sun, things were simple.
It reminded Sally of a kindergarten rhyme and she sang it tunelessly: ‘The sun is rising in the east and heading south for now at least before it goes down in the west yet northern climes are not so blest.’ She’d hated kindergarten.
In the end it didn’t matter where she went. It wasn’t about getting anywhere. It was about getting away from everything.
As she pulled the patio door shut from the outside, she remembered the cup. She’d left it by the motorbike in the equipment shed. Somehow it felt wrong to leave without putting the cup back in the kitchen. She walked down the path past the woodpiles. The hens ran around between her feet as if she weren’t a stranger. In the machine shed she looked around for the cup. She’d set it precariously on the tractor’s dusty, green mudguard. But before she reached for it, she took a few quick steps towards the overturned motorbike and picked it up. Then she hastily took the cup and ran out of the shed down the path.
Liss was just turning into the farmyard on the tractor when Sally reached it; she jumped lightly down from the seat and reached into the engine to turn it off. It chugged to a stop. Smiling, Liss looked at her.
‘You’re leaving?’ she asked with a glance at the rucksack.
Sally shook her head and raised the cup.
‘I was just in the garden,’ she mumbled, and walked into the kitchen.
3 September
It was raining. For the first time in weeks. Good for the wine. As Liss pushed the courtyard door open into the dawn, the air, cool and grey, streamed into the kitchen, which was still warm, almost a little sticky with the warmth of summer. She drank her tea standing, leaning against the doorframe. It was a steady pouring rain. There were puddles in the yard. The hens ran from the stable to the barn and back. That was a life, and who was to say it was wrong, just because it looked pointless from a human perspective?
The girl was still asleep. She was sleeping in the room Liss had given her as if it were her own. Liss walked over to the stove and poured herself more tea. Then she leant against the doorframe again and watched the rain. A day when you ought to just leave the world to drink and not bother it. When you ought to just let the hens run without shaking your head over them. A day when you ought to let a sleeping girl sleep. There was a reason for everything, she just couldn’t see it.
Liss stepped back into the kitchen, laid the table and then fetched her waterproofs. She was about to go when she looked back at the table and hesitated briefly, before eventually fetching a piece of dark bread from the larder and laying it beside the bowl of fruit. Then she went out into the rain and exhaled deeply as the first cool drops fell onto her face.
It hadn’t been raining then. But it had sounded like it. It had been thawing. Those days in February were the saddest ever. The icicles on the gutters melted and dripped ceaselessly onto the lead roofs of the hen houses, the rabbit hutches, the woodshed. The sky seemed to have no flavour. The puddles in the unpaved yard were up to her ankles. The fences by the road were still buried, metres deep, beneath the dirty, hard snowdrifts, a whole winter’s worth, and you couldn’t imagine that it would ever be summer again. She’d been doing her schoolwork and staring longingly out of the window. Now she was outside on this quiet Saturday afternoon, and it felt as though she were entirely alone in the village. Everyone else could have been dead or have suddenly vanished. She could hear nothing but the steady dripping and, now and then, the heavy soughing as a load of snow on one of the roofs started to slip, then drummed down onto the yard. She imagined actually being entirely alone. The village was as extinct as the aftermath of a nuclear war in one of the futuristic novels she borrowed from the local library and read when her father wasn’t at home. He didn’t like her reading. She left the farm and walked down Haselau lane, the heroine of a sci-fi novel. The village looked black and white amid the spent snow, like something out of an old film. In the bakery she could see Anni, tidying up the display. The woman gave her a pretzel every morning as she stood with the others outside the shop window, waiting for the bus. Now she was beckoning her in, but she couldn’t go, because she was on a mission and Anni was nothing but a flickering image on one last television running on the last of the electricity in a plundered shop in a deserted city. She walked further down the narrow street, past the Berger farm, past the parsonage garden wall, on which she sometimes lay face down in the summer, her whole body absorbing the heat of the sun-sated stones. Those were special afternoons, and only very rare. When she’d crept away with a book that she then couldn’t read, because as she read, the images sharpened and, if she squinted a little, the air above the parsonage roof gradually turned as blue as a southern sea. When she and the wall she was lying on had travelled away, unnoticed, into a small, hot town by the sea, and she was no longer Elisabeth but Zora, and no longer had any parents, but was free to go wherever she wanted. And shimmering over the rooftops was the sea.
She hunched her shoulders. On a February day like this, it was a certainty that she’d never see the sea; worse still, it wasn’t even certain that there’d ever be another summer day when she could dream, at least for an hour and a half, of being somebody else.
Hey, Elisabeth!
Thomas.
My name’s not Thomas anymore. I’m called Sonny now. Are you coming?
Thomas was odd. Everyone in the village knew that his father was a bit too free with his fists. But he still kept laughing.
What are you doing?
Come and see. I’ll show you.
He ran ahead, fast, kept turning back to see if she was following. At the last farm – which she didn’t know at all because no child ever went there, not even to say their thank-yous at Carnival when you got a mark, or even two, at every house – Thomas ran round the back into the garden.
Look.
Proudly, as if he’d built it himself: a huge concrete basin. At first she thought it was for slurry, but when she leant over the wall she could see that it was perfectly clean. At the bottom was water, maybe a metre deep, floating on which were proper, thick ice floes, as large as tabletops. Thomas was already swinging himself over the wall, holding a stick that he’d taken from one of the woodpiles.
Come on.
She only hesitated briefly. Then she fetched herself a stick too, lay on the wall on her belly and let herself down onto the ice. And was surprised that it held. Cautiously, she pushed herself away from the concrete wall with the stick and drifted slowly over to the other side. Thomas laughed. They grew braver. Their laughter echoed in the concrete basin. They lurched and jumped from one icesheet to another, pushing each other away. And then Thomas tried to push her off the ice with his stick.
Stop that!
You try. Let’s see who’s stronger.
Stop it! I mustn’t go home wet.
Thomas stabbed at her with the stick. She had to brace herself against the wall and pushed her way into the middle, veering between laughter and anger.
Your father’s got the biggest farm in the village. He can buy you new clothes.
She pushed his ice floe away. He wobbled, had to drop to his knees to avoid falling.
Has not.
She didn’t even know whether theirs was the biggest farm. She’d never thought about it.
Thomas had got up and kicked hard at the edge of her ice sheet. She lost her balance, slipped, and then she was standing up to her hips in the ice-cold water. To her surprise, she could feel a delay before the icy water ran into her boots. Thomas seemed far more shocked than she was.
I didn’t mean to.
He was whispering.
Help me out.
She was furious.
It was only then that she noticed that they had to be standing on the ice to reach the wall again. Suddenly, there was the fear.
Help me!
But Thomas had already hopped up, was trying to reach the coping at the top of the wall. She was battling the ice. The sheet kept tipping, breaking, because they were both moving so wildly, with such fear, and was consequently getting smaller.
Help me!
Thomas had reached the coping and pulled himself up.
I’ll get a stick.
He was gone. Impelled by rage and fear, she hurled herself onto an icesheet with a single, furious leap, lay there until she’d calmed down, and then stood up cautiously. Her legs were trembling. She pushed herself against the wall and jumped with shaky knees, gripped the edge, pulled herself up. Her trousers were heavy with water, but she managed it. She saw Thomas standing on the log pile. He still hadn’t found a long stick, but he was laughing again.
Think it’s funny, do you?
Jerk.
She ran home without looking back for him. But that evening, in bed, she thought back to punting on the ice, and it was only then that she understood why Thomas had laughed. After all, it wasn’t an adventure if it wasn’t dangerous. Properly dangerous, not like in a book. From outside she could hear the steady drip of the melting icicles, and she fell asleep with the thought that the ice floes would be shrinking now too.
5 September
It was Friday, and still nobody had found Sally and had a long, gentle conversation with her, unreproachful, sympathetic, with hatred concealed behind every gentle word. Hatred for her because she wouldn’t fall into line, because she kept running away and because she didn’t listen to their soft, sympathetic, empathetic voices, but kept looking them in the eye, until the fake wall of professional niceness and warmth and understanding crumbled, and she could see the boredom and uninterest and hatred shining behind it.
It was Friday, and still nobody had found her.
