Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything by Daniela Krien, Jamie Bulloch Page A

completelyobsessed by the idea. Johannes will have to cover for his father, and there’s also Alfred. It will make him feel important for a change.
    My work begins on Monday, too. The landlord will show me the ropes and then I’ll start properly on Tuesday. I’m glad to be doing this; it’ll take my mind off things and I’ll be earning my own money.
    Marianne helps me wash up. Today she smells just like Gisela; she must have asked what the name of that perfume was. When we’ve finished she strokes my hair and says, “You’ve become a real help, Maria,” and that makes me feel dreadful all over again.

13
    August is my favorite month. The heat is still there, but it’s not oppressive like July. I become faintly wistful when summer veers toward autumn and my birthday is around the corner. I’m going to be seventeen, and with each passing year I have a greater sense of my significance in the world. But now that our world has become so much larger, this feeling of importance is once again on the wane. On the farm I know I’m needed at least, although they’d get by fine without me.
    I’ve hatched a clever plan: I’m going to spend my birthday with Henner. The timing works rather well. I’ll have breakfast with the Brendels, and then Johannes will have to work all day because Siegfried will be away. After that I’ll go and see my mother for an houror two. I’ll tell her that if I don’t get back to the farm, Johannes will be sad. She’ll understand. Then I’ll make my way across the fields, through the corn, which is now at waist height, and down the valley to Henner’s farm.
    Frieda arrives home today. We’re all dying to hear what she has to say. But when she finally gets here she looks quite unwell and goes to lie down in her room. Hartmut says she’s been tetchy for a few days, she hasn’t even wanted to eat properly. I imagine a trip to Bavaria must be pretty major for someone like Frieda, who has spent her whole life on the farm, never going farther than the county town apart from one trip to the Baltic. And it turns out I’m right. Later she tells us how uncomfortable she felt so far from home, in Hartmut’s guest room among all that modern furniture. She was anxious, and she missed Alfred. Alfred, of all people! She’s overjoyed to be home, and by the evening she’s back to her old self. “Did you do all the cooking, Maria?” she asks. This is the first time she hasn’t addressed me in the third person.
    It’s Monday. Siegfried has gone and I’m on my way to the tavern, which is not open today except to the regulars. My first customers are the village drunks, and I’m delighted to see that Henner is not among them.
    There’s very little to do, just the same round over and over again: a schnapps, a beer, and the occasional plate of raw minced beef with egg and onions.
    After two hours the landlord reckons I’ve mastered the basics, so he sends me home. The day is still young; Johannes is grafting in the animal sheds, and I read the story of the Karamazov brothers almost to the end.
    Now I understand why Henner was pleased when I said I preferred Grushenka to Katarina Ivanov, despite the fact that she can be quite wicked. Dmitry is sentenced to twenty years in a Siberiancamp and Katarina visits him, even though she testified against him in court. All of a sudden Grushenka appears, and Katarina begs her forgiveness. Grushenka replies, “We’re wicked, my dear girl, you and I! We’re both wicked! How then are we to forgive one another—you me and I you? Just save him and I’ll worship you all my life.” So she intends only to thank Katarina, not forgive her. Dmitry is plunged into despair, but Grushenka says, “It’s her proud lips that spoke and not her heart . . . If she saves you, I’ll forgive her everything.”
    That’s what Henner wants. The heart, not the pride.
    But I save the final chapter, the funeral of Little Ilyusha, for later.
    In the evening Johannes is so