MEIKE ZIERVOGEL

  PEIRENE PRESS

  I love this monologue. It’s the first Peirene book which made me laugh out loud.

  The author lays bare the contradictory logic of an inflexible mind.

  This is a poignant yet hilarious narrative with a brilliant ending.

  Contents

  Title Page

  The Mussel Feast

  About the Author and Translator

  Copyright

  It was neither a sign nor a coincidence that we were going to have mussels that evening. Yes, it was slightly unusual, and afterwards we sometimes spoke of the mussels as a sign, but they definitely weren’t; we also said they were a bad omen – that’s nonsense too. Nor were the mussels a coincidence. This evening of all evenings, we’d say, we decided to eat mussels. But it really wasn’t like that; you couldn’t call it a coincidence. After the event, of course, we tried to interpret our decision as a sign or coincidence, because what came in the wake of our abortive feast was so monumental that none of us have got over it yet. We would always have mussels to celebrate a special occasion, and this was a special occasion, although in a very different way from what we’d had in mind. Basically, what we’d had in mind when we were planning the mussel feast was pretty insignificant, certainly less important than the immensity and gravity of what actually happened. But you can’t call our decision to cook mussels that evening a sign or coincidence.

  Mussels were my father’s favourite food, although not ours; my brother liked mussels too, whereas my mother and I never cared for them much. I don’t care for them much, my mother always said as she bent over the bathtub, alternating between the small kitchen knife and the scrubbing brush, her hands bright red from cleaning mussels under the cold tap; she had to scrape, scrub, brush and rinse several times because my father hated nothing more than grains of sand crunching between his teeth. The sound drove him round the bend. I really don’t care for them much, my mother said that afternoon too, blowing on her icy hands. But it was a special occasion and that’s why she’d gone and bought four kilos. She thought my father would enjoy a feast of mussels when he returned home from his business trip, because he’d usually had enough of the fried and grilled lumps of meat he was served up on his trips, and so he would ask Mum to make him some decent food, something home-made at any rate; he never got anything like that in the conference hotels. He was fed up with these conference hotels; they may be comfortable, but they’re not cosy, he said. My father hated going away on business trips; he preferred to stay at home with the family, so his return was always a special occasion. It was our custom to have jacket potatoes with quark and linseed oil, sometimes pea soup, too, and because my father had eaten this food as a child, he’d often request it for nostalgic reasons. He never actually asked for mussels since my parents always cooked mussels together. So for Mum to be scrubbing the mussels on her own that day, her hands bright red under the cold tap, was unusual in itself; it was quite normal, however, for her to say, I don’t care for them much. It was what she always said when my parents scrubbed mussels in the bathroom together, taking it in turn to bend over the tub so that neither became too stiff. For a good hour the bathroom would resound with my father’s laughter and my mother’s squealing and in the past you might have heard them singing the old workers’ song ‘Come, Brothers, to the sun, to freedom’, which they’d learned over there and were forced to sing; ‘This is the final struggle’ and songs like that, my mother with her soprano voice and my father in his baritone. But later, when we were in the company accommodation, they didn’t sing any more. When they came out of the bathroom with bright-red hands they’d look a bit sheepish after all their larking around, and they’d continue messing about in the kitchen. Over time we found out that when they’d gone on their delayed honeymoon to my uncle’s, he’d cooked them a dinner of mussels. They’d never tasted mussels before, because of course there weren’t any mussels in the East, so they must have seemed rather exotic. They also thought there was something suggestive about mussels, something naughty, and they always started flirting when we were having mussels; as a result of the delayed honeymoon by the sea, flirting was routine at our house when mussels were on the menu. And remained so until that day, which we knew in advance was a special, even historic day for our family, for this business trip was to be the last step on my father’s path to promotion. None of us doubted that my father would gain his promotion; for weeks we stayed as quiet as church mice on Saturdays and Sundays while he was writing his lecture and also drawing several colour transparencies by hand; we always said how beautiful these transparencies looked; so, what do you think of them, my father asked, and again we’d say how particularly beautiful they were. We already knew that my father was a brilliant and highly influential speaker; he was known for, and very proud of, his extraordinary didactic skills which he unfurled during these lectures. He also possessed a very winning and endearing manner with the public, a natural charm in addition to his expertise in one of the most difficult and controversial areas of science. This endearing manner with the public softened the rigour of his expertise, and audiences were consistently delighted by the lectures and by my father himself. That evening my mother, alternating between the small kitchen knife and scrubbing brush in her bright-red hand, was holding the mussels one by one under ice-cold water, all four kilos of them, scraping and scrubbing and rinsing several times – since my father couldn’t bear the crunch of sand between his teeth – because he would be coming through the door with his promotion virtually in the bag; not officially of course, but he’d been given the nod from above. Though Mum grumbled jokingly that she didn’t care for them much, and complained about her crooked spine, still we weren’t allowed to help; leave it, if there’s any sand in them then at least neither of you will be to blame, my mother said. But we were allowed to cut the chips; you always have chips with mussels, I don’t care for them much, either, even though Mum cooks the best chips I’ve ever tasted. My brother, on the other hand, goes crazy for them, they’re unrivalled, he always said; once he even invited all his friends who doubted and teased him about the chips to our house, and my mother made chips for them all, and my brother was terribly proud of her. Since then we’d sometimes help prepare the chips; that evening we peeled the potatoes and cut them into thin batons, increasingly feeling twitchy. Afterwards we said that this was when we started to become anxious, when we suspected something was up; of course it was only afterwards that we knew what would happen. So maybe we were simply twitchy because we were waiting; we always felt twitchy when we waited for my father, there was always a certain tension. We may well have exaggerated the tension in retrospect; perhaps we didn’t suspect anything at all. My brother, for example, didn’t sense anything, while Mum and I did feel anxious, but then again we’re the anxious ones in the family, whereas my brother only gets anxious when it’s inevitable; until then he can quite happily ignore hints or signs of foreboding. I, at any rate, can remember precisely when my mood suddenly changed: when I looked at the clock and saw that it was three minutes past six. At three minutes past six my mood shifted from an anxious anticipation to an uncomfortable, even uncanny, feeling. My mother had put the mussels in a pot beneath the kitchen clock, and as I heard the noise I looked first at the mussels and then straight at the kitchen clock. The noise was coming from the mussels, which had already been cleaned and scrubbed; they were sitting in the large, black enamel pot that we always used, because it was the only one large enough to hold four kilos. My mother had fled from the East with this pot, she told us; it was indispensable for washing nappies, and she used to wash our nappies by hand, or rather with a wooden spoon. I asked whether it wasn’t impractical to flee with a massive pot like that; in my mind I had a ridiculous picture of her escaping over the barbed wire, dragging the enormous pot behind her, but Mum said, you’ve got completely the wrong idea about the flight, I mean we didn’t just make a dash for it, we prepared well in advance. We loved listening to how she managed to move all our stuff to West Berlin, and to the story about the bananas, too. My father was almost arrested at the border, on his very first and in fact last trip to Berlin. He must have acted very awkwardly; even he admits that he’s no good at such clandestine business. The only time he dared to bring anything across the border, he was too cocky, trying to take back two kilos of bananas from the West. They caught him immediately, hauled him out of the underground, interrogated him and everything, but in the end they let him go. I don’t know if they really arrested people for a few bananas, seeing as half the country was trying to escape; I can’t imagine that was the case, but my father says that it was resistance, political resistance. In any event he never went back and my mother brought the big enamel pot to her friend. She always took me with her when she went to Berlin; mother and child looked less suspicious and anyhow she needed to go to the Charité Hospital because I had a problem with my hip. She simply got out of the train en route and handed the things to her friend, that’s what she always told us; on the way there we were wrapped up in winter clothes, on the way back we weren’t wearing very much. It was risky; your father’s no good at such clandestine business, my mother said when we showed surprise at the story with the bananas.

  Anyway, the noise came from the pot and as I glanced over I couldn’t help looking at the clock, too: it said three minutes past six. And at that moment my mood changed abruptly. I stared at the noisy pot and although I knew that the mussels were still alive, I didn’ t know that they made noises in the pot, because I was never around when my parents cooked mussels. Initially I wondered whether the noise was coming from somewhere else, but it was distinctly coming from the pot, and it was a distinctly strange noise, which made me feel creepy; we were already twitchy and nervous, and now there was this noise. I stared at the pot and I stopped cutting the potatoes into batons, because the noise was driving me mad, and the hair on my arms stood on end. This always happens when I get a creepy feeling, and unfortunately it shows, because the hair on my arms is black, so now my mother could see that I was spooked, although she didn’t realize the cause was the noise of the mussels from the pot, as for her it wasn’t a strange noise. Can’t you hear anything, I asked. Listen! It’s the mussels, my mother said, and I remember saying, isn’t it awful, I mean I knew that they were still alive, it’s just that I’d never imagined that they would make that rattling noise with their shells. I’d imagined they’d be cooked, eaten, and that was it. And my mother said, they’re opening up and then the entire heap of mussels will start moving. How horrible, I thought, the entire heap of mussels will move because they’re opening; of course I didn’t empathize with them; I do eat them, after all, even if I don’t particularly care for mussels, and it’s obvious that they’re alive beforehand and not alive when I eat them. I eat oysters, too, even though I know that they’re still alive when I eat them, but they don’t make that noise. Actually I was kind of angry at the mussels for opening instead of lying silently in a heap; I said, don’t you find it obscene that they open and make that noise, obscene and indiscreet, but at the same time I probably thought it was indiscreet because we were going to kill them. I’d rather not have had to think about the fact that they were alive beforehand; when they’re lying there, jet-black and closed, you don’t really need to imagine that they’re alive, you can pretty much regard them as objects, and then there’s no problem tipping them into boiling water, but if you consider that they’re alive then it’s creepy. If we were to cook them now I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking that we were killing them. I’m quite happy for animals to be killed for food, it’s just that I don’t want to be involved in the killing – other people can do that – nor do I want to have to think about it.

  Although I found the mussels creepy, I went over, as I didn’t want to be cowardly; and they looked revolting, lying there, some opening slowly, fairly slowly, and then the entire heap of them started to move with this rattling sound. Unbelievable, I said, how revolting these creatures are, gasping as instead of seawater they get air, which they can’t breathe, and they’re also being scalded in the boiling water, and then they all open, which means they’re dead. The thought suddenly occurred to me that maybe it was only revolting because I knew we were killing them. Maybe it wouldn’t have looked so disgusting otherwise; I remembered having seen half-open mussels on the beach without feeling anything. I even threw some of them back into the sea, not out of any real pity and not all of them – just for fun. Anyway, I didn’t find them creepy or revolting like these ones here. My mother and brother cut the last few potatoes into batons, acting as if they hadn’t been listening, and finally I said that if you knew someone was going to die in an hour, let’s say, do you think you’d find them revolting; I’m positive you would, simply because you knew, and it would be even worse if you had to kill them yourself, like we were killing the mussels. Such thoughts plunged me into a really morbid mood, while the other two acted as if they weren’t listening; it’s mass murder, I said, all of them at once, at the same time, by boiling water; the mussels got me so worked up, the mussels had created a morbid atmosphere in the room. It’s unbearable, I said, to which my mother replied sternly, what are you talking about, although Mum harboured plenty of fanciful ideas herself; when my father was on business trips the three of us told each other the most fanciful stories, without ever being appalled. Before my father came home, however, all these fanciful ideas vanished, especially my mother’s. My father regarded flights of fancy as childish, my father stood for sober objectivity and reason, and of course my mother showed consideration for his objectivity and reason, conforming and switching to wifey mode when he came home. And when my mother said, what are you talking about, I knew at once that she’d switched to wifey mode, and the rage of disgust which I felt towards the mussels was now directed at my mother. Aren’t we allowed to think any more, I said, but my mother said, is that what you call thinking, can’t you think something useful rather than those sinister thoughts. In our family sinister thoughts and fantasies were regarded as squandered thoughts, especially when my father was at home, and although he wasn’t there yet he might arrive at any moment. Can’t we make them close again, I asked. I don’t think thoughts can be squandered, because by their very nature they’re the loveliest way to while away the time. Eventually I discovered that the mussels close when you put a knife into them; it triggers some sort of reflex and the mussels close rapidly again. Look, I said, taking the small kitchen knife that Mum had used for cleaning, and stabbing it into the mussels, one by one, the rattling no longer bothering me; they closed instantly. I stabbed and stabbed again. I actually encouraged all the mussels to close, and watching them close was comforting; I wasn’t at all bothered when my brother said, you’re crazy.

  The chips had all been cut and my mother said, right, it would be good if he arrived now. Dinner was already late, we always ate at six o’clock because my father came home from the office at half past five; first he’d read the paper and drink his beer in peace while Mum prepared dinner, and at six on the dot, as I said, we ate, except when he was away on business, then the schedule went by the wayside and everything was different. There were cheese rolls and hot chocolate, we ate whenever we wanted to, sometimes standing up in the kitchen and with our hands. I don’t think we ever ate with a knife and fork when my father was away. We let our hair down while you were away, Mum said when my father asked, what did you get up to without me; it’s really nice to let your hair down a bit sometimes, Mum continued slightly wistfully, because she had as much fun as we did and less work, too, when we were alone with her. We seldom argued, and I liked it when we let our hair down, but my father didn’t want to hear any more of it and so she switched to wifey mode. As it was now getting on for seven o’clock she’d already switched. We were all expecting him to come through the door and ask, so, what do you have to say, because his promotion was virtually in the bag, and we would have said what a clever, successful father we had, and my mother would have been pleased, too, and then we would have celebrated his success, listening to him talk about his business trip, and we would have completely forgotten our wild behaviour – only: it was seven o’clock and he hadn’t come back yet. So Mum’s wifey mode appeared silly and pointless; my brother even said, we’re sitting here all dressed up and nowhere to go. This didn’t stop my mother dashing into the bathroom and, as a precaution, combing her hair and reapplying her lipstick, which she had already put on an hour earlier; she walked around with her evening face on display, saying, he’ll be here soon. My mother would often switch modes several times a day, and for each switch there was a change of face. At school she wore her serious face and was strict. She tried to replicate this face at home, but it never worked with us. We weren’t afraid of her in the slightest, although her pupils were; her school face was really scary. Once my brother and I sat at the back of her class and listened in. We could have died laughing – she looked so strict, we couldn’t actually believe that this woman was our mother. Respect is essential, she said; my father, too, said that respect was essential, an absolute necessity, otherwise you don’t learn anything; but it never crossed our minds to show our mother respect. At home she wore her knackered, exhausted face, her household face; when she came back from school in the afternoon, she said, I’m knackered today, I don’t have much energy after six hours of school. My father often said, how are you treating your mother, kindly show her some respect; in vain my father tried to instil in us the respect for our mother which she could not command from us herself. He said, can’t you see how she’s slaving away for you two, she grafts all day long. Of course we could see her grafting and slaving away, lugging heavy bags. When my father came home in the evening, she continued to graft and slave away, and if there wasn’t any beer she’d dash out, for his cigarettes, too, and everything else my father had forgotten on his way home, she would dash out to get it in the evening. My father was a heavy smoker, and Mum often had to dash out, but he couldn’t stand my mother’s knackered face, and so she switched to her after-work face, which she would paint on quickly in the bathroom at half past five, before my father came home. But this after-work face only lasted for an hour and needed reapplying. Now she was walking around with her after-work face on display, saying, he’ll be back soon, and I thought, I can’t stand all this switching. When my father was away on business I used to have more respect for Mum; although she tried to be strict then, too, we basically got on well when there wasn’t any switching. Most importantly, she couldn’t spend the evenings telling my father about what we’d done wrong, so we had more respect for her. Sometimes she said, isn’t this nice, children, just the three of us, probably because she found switching modes strenuous too. But when I asked, why do you bother conforming and switching to wifey mode, she replied, that’s what it’s like when you’re married and have a job, you’ll see. I’m pretty sure I won’t switch to wifey mode, I said; she just laughed at me, saying, you won’t find a husband anyway. She was seriously worried that nobody would ever marry me, unlikeable as I was, and unappealingly stubborn since early childhood. Luckily I never regarded my ultimate aim in life as being to switch to wifey mode at half past five every evening. I didn’t like it when Mum switched; I found it embarrassing, and when we did it, too. I preferred us when my father was away on business. You see we all had to switch for my father, to become a proper family, as he called it, because he hadn’t had a family, but he had developed the most detailed notions of what a proper family should be like, and he could be extremely sensitive if you undermined these notions.

 

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