The Taste of Apple Seeds by Katharina Hagena

village teacher, just in time for the funeral of his predecessor. It was a blessing for everyone. The villagers were delighted to get a close look at the new teacher so soon. And Carsten Lexow counted himself lucky that he was wearing the black suit that he had had made for his father’s funeral. It was also a good opportunity to introduce himself to everybody before they started making up stories about him. Of course they made up stories anyway, for Carsten Lexow was tall and slim with dark hair that he had difficulty keeping to one side, only managing it with a severe parting. His eyes were blue, but one day in class Anna Deelwater discovered, as he looked up from her exercise book, which he had been marking, that his pupils were hemmed with golden rings, and from that moment to the end of her life, which was not a long time, she remained chained to these rings.
    There was only a single photograph of Anna Deelwater, the eldest daughter of Käthe, actually Katharina, and Carl Deelwater, but many copies of it. My mother had one, there was one hanging in Aunt Inga’s house, and Rosmarie had stuck one in her wardrobe with tape. Aunt Anna—that was what my aunts and my mother called her when they spoke about her—Aunt Anna was dark-haired like her mother. In the photo it looked as if she had dark eyes, too, but Aunt Inga maintained that this was because of the poor lighting. What could be said with certainty was that she had drawn-out gray eyes and broad eyebrows that formed crescents rather than a straight line. Anna’s eyebrows dominated her face, giving it something secretive and wild at the same time. She was shorter than her sister, but not as thin. Although Bertha, long-legged, fair, and cheerful, seemed to be the very opposite of her sister in appearance and character, both girls in fact were reserved, almost shy, and absolutely inseparable. They would whisper and giggle just as much as other girls of their age, but only ever together. Some people thought they were haughty, because Carl Deelwater owned the most pastureland and the biggest farmhouse in Bootshaven. He had also bought a pew for himself and his family in the front row of the church, engraved with his surname. Not that he was particularly religious. He seldom went to church, but when he did, on the high festivals such as Easter, Christmas, and Harvest Festival, he sat at the front in his own pew with his wife and daughters, and was gawked at by the other members of the small parish. On the many Sundays in the year when he didn’t go to church, the pew remained empty and was gawked at all the same. Anna and Bertha were proud of their beautiful farmhouse and their wonderful father who, although he worried about who would succeed him at the farm, never held it against his daughters or his wife but sought to spoil his “three lasses” as much as possible.
    Both daughters had to pitch in at home; they lent a hand to their mother in the house and helped Agnes, the maid, in the kitchen. Agnes came every day and was not a maid at all but a grown woman with three adult sons. With Agnes they made juice and plucked chickens. But what they enjoyed most of all, and spent most time doing, was working outside in the garden.
    From the end of August they were rarely out of the apple trees. The light bell-shaped apples were ready first; they tasted of lemon, and from the moment you took your first bite it was impossible to finish them before the flesh started turning brown. These were never cooked to a pulp; their aroma vanished like the August wind they had ripened in. Then, slowly, came the apples on the Cox’s Orange trees; the big one first of all, which grew very close to the house and basked in the heat given off by the red clinker bricks that had stored up the sun throughout the day. This meant that its fruit was always larger and sweeter than that of the other apple trees.
    By October, all the trees had fruited. Anna and Bertha moved almost as nimbly in the