The Taste of Apple Seeds by Katharina Hagena Page B

that the seeds were poisonous, Anna replied that they tasted like marzipan. She only ever spat out the stalk. That was what Bertha told me when she noticed once that I ate apples like her, Bertha. That was how most people ate apples.
    In summer, Carsten Lexow gave his pupils a day off because of the heat, a “fruit-picking day,” as he called it. Bertha laughed and said it was the pick of her lessons. Carsten Lexow noticed his pupil’s small white teeth and the fidgety ease with which her large hands tried to push the loose hair at the nape of her neck back into her pigtails. As her teacher was still looking at her, and because she felt she might have annoyed him with her cheeky comment, she blushed, turned, and slunk away. His heart pounding, Herr Lexow stared at Bertha and said nothing. Anna saw everything, she recognized the look with which Herr Lexow followed her sister, recognized it just as you would recognize your own reflection in the mirror, and hurried off to find Bertha, her cheeks a deep red and her head bowed.
    Anna loved Lexow, Lexow loved Bertha, and Bertha? She actually loved Heinrich Lünschen, or Hinnerk as everyone called him. He was the son of the landlord at the village pub, a nobody with little land. All the family had were two small pastures right at the edge of the village, and these were leased to an even poorer old devil. Hinnerk hated his parents’ pub. Hated the smell of the kitchen and of stale beer in the bar in the morning. Hated the passionate and loud rows his parents had, hated their equally passionate and loud reconciliations. One night when Hinnerk and one of his younger brothers—Hinnerk was the eldest—were forced to listen to a particularly ferocious argument in the dark kitchen, his brother said that they would probably have another brother soon. Hinnerk got angry; he hated all his mother’s pregnancies.
    “How do you know that?”
    “Well, whenever they’ve had a row we get another brother soon afterward.”
    Hinnerk gave a cruel laugh. He had to get out of there. He hated it.
    He had come to the attention of Herr Deelwater because the pastor and the old teacher had praised his intellect to the skies. Hinnerk was cleverer than anybody else in the village, he was very well aware of this, and a few others who were not stupid themselves had noticed it, too. Hinnerk was often at the Deelwaters’ house. He helped on the farm at harvest time, earning himself a little money. He was given even more money by the pastor; however, this only made the proud Hinnerk hate this man, too. He quit the church at the first available opportunity, which was provided by his mother’s funeral. They could save on costs for the homily, he said, anyone else could do it just as well, all those speeches sounded the same anyway, all priests did was insert the relevant name, but some of them found even that difficult enough. The pastor, who had put a lot of money into Hinnerk’s education, and whose—admittedly not very extensive—library had always been at Hinnerk’s disposal, was deeply offended, not just because of Hinnerk’s lack of respect and gratitude, but also because Hinnerk had come all too close to the truth. But the legal exams were passed with flying colors and the young lawyer, by then freshly engaged to the Deelwater daughter, was no longer financially dependent on the pastor. The pastor knew this and also knew that Hinnerk knew he knew, and this was what irritated him most of all.
    I remembered Hinnerk Lünschen as a loving grandfather who could fall asleep wherever he laid his head; he made full use of this ability. Sure, his moods were unpredictable. But he was no longer full of hatred; he was a proud notary, proud owner of a law firm, proud husband of a beautiful wife who made him a proud owner of a proud property, proud father of three beautiful daughters and proud grandfather of two even more beautiful granddaughters, as he always assured Rosmarie and me while shoveling proud