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

exhausted that he can barely stand. Hard labor on the farm is not his thing. I think Siegfried knows this, which is why he’s letting him go. He’s a reasonable man. Even Johannes’s hands are different from his father’s. Narrow, pale, and soft. Unlike Siegfried, when Johannes wields the pitchfork it doesn’t look natural. You could say we have no word in the matter; our bodies are predetermined from the outset. Johannes’s hands, Siegfried’s paws, my own body, which just now seems to have been made for Henner alone.
    I think of his hands, which are like Siegfried’s, but also quite different. They’re waiting to caress me.
    Down below, Alfred is sitting idly on the bench. He seems happier, now that his Frieda is home. What binds them is their secret, a secret they will never disclose.
    It’s peaceful on the farm tonight. There’s not a breath of wind in the leaves of the old chestnut tree. The cat is lying at Alfred’s feet. Johannes is asleep, Lukas went to bed ages ago, Frieda is recovering from her adventure, and at last Marianne has the chance to leaf through her magazines, which recently she’s been hiding fromSiegfried. The chickens are still running around, even though it’s dark. I think about chasing them into the shed, but then assume Alfred is going to do it, so I get into bed beside Johannes.
    When I wander out into the yard the next morning, Marianne is crying on the bench. Her elbows are propped on her legs and her face is buried in her hands. She’s sobbing so loudly that it’s not long before Alfred and Frieda appear at the windows. Then I see the catastrophe with my own eyes: a fox has been by and all the chickens are dead.
    Worst of all is that it should happen now, while Siegfried is away and Marianne is in charge. He has his views on women, one of which is that you can’t trust them to do things by themselves, or everything goes belly-up. That’s unfair, but he won’t be argued with. We wonder what we should do, and Johannes suggests that we buy new chickens. But this sets off Marianne again, and she says, “He’d notice at once. Come on, he knows every animal here personally.” She really does say “personally,” and for some reason this makes me want to laugh, but I hold myself together as best I can.
    Eventually I head over to the tavern to start my shift, and from there I call Hartmut. I can scarcely believe that we’ll soon have our own telephone line. It seems like the height of luxury, and I make a promise to myself never to forget this time, when it was different. Hartmut isn’t at home, but Siegfried comes to the phone and listens in silence as I tell him what happened. I didn’t think he would say much, and I was right. “You just can’t trust them to do things by themselves,” he says after a lengthy pause. Then he hangs up. The entire day is under a cloud.
    When I get back to the farm that evening I see a car in the drive I don’t recognize. It’s my father; he’s sitting on the bench waiting for me.
    I should say about my father that he isn’t really a father at all.
    I remember very little. I was always told that Dad was away working, and when he came home on leave the arguments would start again almost immediately. Perhaps Mom started them too; at any rate there was a lot of shouting. What I most remember about him is that he was never there. He seldom lived with us even though they were married. First came the work trips, then the Russian gas pipeline. On leave he was permanently restless, pacing up and down, going for long walks in the woods. Even on the coldest winter days, he insisted the barbecue was lit in the garden. It was a habit he picked up in Russia, where they barbecued all the time. Vodka kept the men warm and the women wore thick fur coats. Oh yes, the women. When he was home on leave he’d often go into town to buy ladies’ underwear. They didn’t have enough of it in Russia, he said, and you could sell it easily there. I don’t believe