trees as on the ground. Some years before, a gardener had nailed a few boards to the branches of a particularly heavily laden Boskoop tree so that they could sit their baskets on them. But the girls preferred sitting there themselves. They would read books to each other, drink juice, and eat apples and sometimes buttercake, which Agnes always brought out to them when one of her sons had stopped by. At least this meant she could say, if anyone ever asked why only one of the two tins of buttercake was left, that Bertha and Anna had eaten some, too. But nobody ever did ask.
Of course, Herr Lexow didn’t tell me about Agnes’s buttercake. I don’t think he even knew that Agnes existed. I was sitting at the kitchen table in Bertha’s house, seeing my grandmother and great-aunt as children, although in my mind Anna never looked any different from how she did in the photograph. Sipping a mug of lukewarm UHT milk I recalled things Bertha had told my mother and my mother had told me, or that Aunt Harriet had told Rosmarie and Rosmarie had told Mira and me, and things we had made up or at least imagined. On occasion Frau Koop had told us how when he was a boy her husband had found his teacher dead in the classroom. Nikolaus Koop had become a good-natured, hardworking farmer who had a cataract and was terrified of his wife. He only needed to hear her voice and his eyes would start to blink nervously behind a pair of thick lenses. His eyelids fluttered like the wings of the linnet that had once flown by mistake through the open sitting-room window of the Deelwaters’ house and couldn’t find its way out again. Aunt Harriet had sprung up and instructed us to open all the windows so it didn’t break its neck on a pane of glass. The bird flew away, leaving behind two red feathers on the windowsill.
Nikolaus Koop blinked often in this way, and we had also noticed that each time he saw his wife he pushed his glasses up onto his forehead. Mira thought he was trying to evade his wife through self-imposed blindness, a sort of escape route, just like an open window. But Rosmarie insisted that, unlike the bird, it was not his own neck he was afraid of breaking but Frau Koop’s. What we couldn’t know at the time was that it was Rosmarie whose neck would be broken, and by flying through a pane of glass.
I worked out for myself some of what Herr Lexow was trying to tell me as I looked into his blue eyes and discovered the rings around his pupils, which were no longer golden but ocher. The white around them had now turned a little yellowy. He had to be way over eighty. And who was he now, anyway? My great-uncle? No, as my aunt’s father he was my grandfather. But he couldn’t be, that was Hinnerk Lünschen. He was quite simply a “friend of the family,” a witness.
A few years ago, at a time when my grandmother no longer knew that I existed, my mother went to stay with her for a fortnight. It was one of her last visits before Bertha went into the home. On a warm afternoon the two of them were sitting behind the house, in the orchard. All of a sudden Bertha gave Christa a look that was exceptionally alert and insistent, and told her firmly that Anna had loved Boskoop, and she Cox’s Orange. As if this were the final secret she had to divulge.
Anna loved Boskoop, Bertha Cox’s Orange. In autumn the sisters’ hair carried the scent of apples, as did their clothes and hands. They would cook apple puree, apple cider, and apple jelly with cinnamon, and more often than not they would have apples in their apron pockets and apples with bites taken out of them in their hands. Bertha would start by quickly eating a fat ring around the middle, nibble carefully around the blossom end at the bottom, around the stalk at the top, and then she would throw away the core in a high arc. Anna ate her apples slowly, relishing them from top to bottom—the entire thing. She would spend hours chewing on the seeds. When Bertha scolded her for this, saying
Of course, Herr Lexow didn’t tell me about Agnes’s buttercake. I don’t think he even knew that Agnes existed. I was sitting at the kitchen table in Bertha’s house, seeing my grandmother and great-aunt as children, although in my mind Anna never looked any different from how she did in the photograph. Sipping a mug of lukewarm UHT milk I recalled things Bertha had told my mother and my mother had told me, or that Aunt Harriet had told Rosmarie and Rosmarie had told Mira and me, and things we had made up or at least imagined. On occasion Frau Koop had told us how when he was a boy her husband had found his teacher dead in the classroom. Nikolaus Koop had become a good-natured, hardworking farmer who had a cataract and was terrified of his wife. He only needed to hear her voice and his eyes would start to blink nervously behind a pair of thick lenses. His eyelids fluttered like the wings of the linnet that had once flown by mistake through the open sitting-room window of the Deelwaters’ house and couldn’t find its way out again. Aunt Harriet had sprung up and instructed us to open all the windows so it didn’t break its neck on a pane of glass. The bird flew away, leaving behind two red feathers on the windowsill.
Nikolaus Koop blinked often in this way, and we had also noticed that each time he saw his wife he pushed his glasses up onto his forehead. Mira thought he was trying to evade his wife through self-imposed blindness, a sort of escape route, just like an open window. But Rosmarie insisted that, unlike the bird, it was not his own neck he was afraid of breaking but Frau Koop’s. What we couldn’t know at the time was that it was Rosmarie whose neck would be broken, and by flying through a pane of glass.
I worked out for myself some of what Herr Lexow was trying to tell me as I looked into his blue eyes and discovered the rings around his pupils, which were no longer golden but ocher. The white around them had now turned a little yellowy. He had to be way over eighty. And who was he now, anyway? My great-uncle? No, as my aunt’s father he was my grandfather. But he couldn’t be, that was Hinnerk Lünschen. He was quite simply a “friend of the family,” a witness.
A few years ago, at a time when my grandmother no longer knew that I existed, my mother went to stay with her for a fortnight. It was one of her last visits before Bertha went into the home. On a warm afternoon the two of them were sitting behind the house, in the orchard. All of a sudden Bertha gave Christa a look that was exceptionally alert and insistent, and told her firmly that Anna had loved Boskoop, and she Cox’s Orange. As if this were the final secret she had to divulge.
Anna loved Boskoop, Bertha Cox’s Orange. In autumn the sisters’ hair carried the scent of apples, as did their clothes and hands. They would cook apple puree, apple cider, and apple jelly with cinnamon, and more often than not they would have apples in their apron pockets and apples with bites taken out of them in their hands. Bertha would start by quickly eating a fat ring around the middle, nibble carefully around the blossom end at the bottom, around the stalk at the top, and then she would throw away the core in a high arc. Anna ate her apples slowly, relishing them from top to bottom—the entire thing. She would spend hours chewing on the seeds. When Bertha scolded her for this, saying
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