We had been there on holiday. Jermayne had been there twice on his own on the strength of some software work for a hotel chain. I’ve forgotten their name, but in those days they were quite big fish in the industry—I imagine they’ve since been swallowed by a larger fish—so there was a lot of work on. Jermayne was always over there, back and forth, between here and Hamburg, and Cologne, as I recall. The business was going well. We were doing well, as normal people.
Jermayne had met the surrogate and talked with her. I did not want to meet with her. I did not want to know her name. I did not want to know anything about her. I didn’t want to think of her as anything more than an incubator for our baby.
When babies are born they could be anyone’s. That’s the truth—as Jermayne himself might have said. And yet the parents still pick them apart and search for whatever they can find that reminds them of themselves—hair, eyes, ears. But really in those few months a baby is its own whole new thing. There is nothing in that new baby to trace back to anyone in particular. That’s the thing I noticed. The next thing I discovered is that that first impression does not last. A baby definitely comes from somewhere. In those first few months it is still getting its colour scheme right, features are still finding their future mould. A baby is really a process, rather than a solidly arrived at thing, if you see what I mean. And after six months or so a baby begins to grow into its own future.
Now with our boy it is easy to see Jermayne. His face set like a little buddha’s, a heaviness around his shoulders, just like my husband. But I could find nothing of me, nothing at all, which is not surprising because now I know I wasn’t part of the recipe. Slowly however Daniel grows into someone else whom I do not recognise. Perhaps there is still a touch of Jermayne about him, but this other area of character, and of physical character, I just don’t know about. There are times when Daniel’s eyes turn into shields, they express nothing, absolutely nothing at all, but at the same time they appear to know a lot. I find myself wishing I had taken a greater interest in the surrogate. When Jermayne said the test tube with our ingredients was tipped inside of the woman, supervised of course, I saw people in white coats, I saw a hygienic situation. Jermayne in some sort of green hospital gown and wearing a white face mask. He always used to complain that I watched too much television.
The part of the child that was not my husband remained a mystery right up until I saw the mother standing under the trees in Tiergarten. There it was. It was no mystery after all.
Then she disappeared. I might as well be honest. I was glad about that. Soon after I told Jermayne to pack up his things. I didn’t know what the woman had done. I didn’t know about the manslaughter charge or the prison term until the visit from the inspector.
I had grocery bags in both hands, Daniel was with me, and I was trying to get the key in the door when someone helpful—someone without a face at this point, just somebody helpful or another tenant in the building, I could have assumed that too, it happens from time to time—relieved me of the shopping as I unlocked the door. Inside, the inspector introduced himself. Very politely he asked if we could talk inside my apartment. He was still holding the shopping and I knew the only way I would get it back was to allow him to carry it up the stairs to the apartment. You see how a man like the inspector can pass through walls.
So we climb the stairs in silence. Daniel has run ahead and left the doors open. Inside the apartment the inspector set the shopping down. I sent Daniel down to the courtyard. I told him we were to be left alone until I called for him. From here on the conversation is in English. The inspector followed me out to the kitchen. I always make myself coffee after the shopping. The inspector didn’t want any. He rubbed his stomach—said he suffers from acid. Well, Jermayne used to suffer the same thing. Peppermint tea is good for that sort of condition. I looked in the cupboard but Jermayne must have taken the peppermint tea with him. The inspector was happy with water.
Now the sound of the ball bouncing against the wall in the courtyard travelled up the side of the building. It can be the most lonesome sound in the world. At other times it is irritating. For the inspector it was a matter of curiosity. He admired the pots of Italian parsley, mint and rosemary on the sill and pressed his face to the window. Down in the courtyard the ball bounced against the wall, back and forth, back and forth. He sleeps with that ball. He won’t walk anywhere without that ball. He walks to school kicking it ahead of him. He is a quiet boy. Hardly ever says a word. He is obsessed by that ball. He is not interested in other children. I took him to see a doctor. He passed us on to a specialist. The specialist says he has a mild form of Asperger’s.
To get away from the ball in the courtyard we returned to the living room. What did we talk about? Nothing much at all. I kept waiting for the inspector to come to the point. He talked about stamps. That’s why he’d come to Berlin—for a stamp fair. His father had introduced him to stamps and following his death he had inherited his collection. He had stamps from every country. Some I’d never heard of. Others that no longer exist or do so in a new form and have a new name. I didn’t see where all this was leading, until finally he asks to see the ‘adoption papers’. I went and got them. I have nothing to hide. The signatures are there. The authorities have stamped the papers. The inspector looked at them, though I could tell he wasn’t reading. His Deutsch is not nearly good enough. He asked for a copy. There is a copy shop nearby. I offered to walk there with him whenever he was ready. When it came time for him to depart he forgot about the papers and I did not remind him.
I should add here that before he left he opened his briefcase and brought out a ring folder. A black ring folder which he slid across the table to me. ‘They are testimonies, and they will tell you more than I can,’ he said. On reflection I don’t think the adoption papers interested him at all. He was just hoping to soften me up. Perhaps that is what he thought I needed. I don’t know. But this is the order in which our conversation ran its course.
His second request was from the birth mother. She would like a photo of the boy. The inspector said he had thought hard and long about this request. He decided it could only be a good thing. At a glance she would be able to see he is well fed and well cared for. Loved, he thought to add.
Yes, I said. He is loved. He is loved by the only mother he has known.
That was just my nerves speaking out loud. As soon as I said it I knew I was wrong. There were the times in the park, all those times—where Daniel had run across the fields to this woman who I knew nothing about, a complete stranger at that point.
Perhaps I sounded too aggressive. Yes, I think so, because the inspector rose to his feet. He looked ready to leave. But I didn’t move from my chair because I had a question of my own.
‘How did she know you were coming to Berlin, inspector?’
‘I visit her,’ he said. ‘I visit whenever I can.’
‘So you are friends?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘But you help her?’
‘Where I can. My wife Francesca and I. But, as you can see, I am not always successful.’
I told him I wouldn’t give her a baby photograph. Then I got up and walked out to the kitchen. I raised the window and called Daniel up to the apartment. When I returned to the living room the inspector was smiling down at himself as he cleaned the lens on his little camera.
Since then I have sent more photographs. I even sent one of myself. A short letter arrived from her. In English. Thanking me. She wished she had a photograph of herself to send. I wrote back to say that could wait. Then she wrote back, and things just evolved from there.
Once I shut myself up in the bathroom. I sat on the rim of the bathtub with a cup of coffee. I wanted to find out what it felt like to be shuttered up in a cell. Then I called Daniel in, got him to bring in his ball as well. Some time after that I received a letter from the inspector to say he’d managed to get her moved from the over-crowded Piazza Lanza in Catania to a nicer prison in Agrigento. In her
letters she never complained of the other place, of its over-crowding and general decay and poor amenities.
When Daniel’s last birthday came round I asked him what he wanted. What did he most wish for in the world? It was a question I was asked when I was a child and I never had difficulty compiling my list. Daniel shook his head. What about a new ball? He replied with a smile. Anything else? He shook his head. I reminded him of the woman his father used to take him to see. I asked him, ‘Would you like to write to her?’ I told him I would help with his letter. He turned into a little wooden soldier. I could have tipped him at the shoulder and rocked him back and forth. I had to tell him nothing bad would come of it. Only good. Then I heard myself say this—‘I think she would like to hear from her boy.’
Here is another night I find myself alone. I get into bed. I turn on the television. There is a program about retired Britons buying French castles. Men with weary faces who gaze despondently up at high impregnable walls. The jovial women do all the talking. I think, with Jermayne, I should have been more like them. Large and bossy. I switch channels to a game show. For a while I watch surfers on huge waves in the Pacific. I switch to the History Channel. It is D-Day. I must have dozed off because I wake to sand explosions and marines wading ashore.
I used to find myself saying, I can’t imagine. But, I’ve since found out, you can—it’s just a case of wanting to.
It is late now. I get up and walk to the window. I picture her crossing the park. Car doors open, they close behind her. Voices carry from the trees. A woman emerges in front of her. They give each other a fright, then politely move around one another. More cars. The electric whine of a window. A man calls after her. For a while there are footsteps behind her—they keep in time with her own, waiting to see if she will turn off into the trees. She concentrates on what lies ahead. The cars peter out. The voices drift away. She crosses the canal and enters the street below. I picture her down there in a doorway. In her letter she told me there are creatures in the sea that blend perfectly into the background. Creatures that look like sand or plants. You can’t see them until they move. A car or truck moves along the street and she steps into its shadow and moves with it until the passing shapes deposit her in a doorway on the other side of the canal. It is empty right now. She said she used to occupy it the way a crab will occupy an abandoned shell. It is very late. Perhaps there is ice down the street. The canal has frozen over. Yet she has travelled across town for this moment. She does not hope to see him. But to stand in the same street, under the same lit clouds, to be near.
One day she will leave the prison. I don’t know if this is how they do it. But in my head this is how I see it happening. I imagine other prisoners released that day as well.
They will step out of a hole in the side of fortress walls, a small group of women with pasty faces taking big breaths, taking small steps, stopping now and then to look up at the sky. They walk out to the road where there is a bus stop and some kind of pickup area. Some family people will swing by and scoop up the prisoners. One by one they will drift off like dogs retrieved from the pound. Until all that is left is the woman. And then Daniel and I will come by. She will look up, surprised. She’s been sitting there with a heavy heart. Now she sees us—sees me and looks confused perhaps, yes, that is likely, but then she will see the boy and that’s when she stands up and the rest of the world melts away.
I don’t imagine the next part. I can’t bear to think about that part.
I’m getting there.
I’m just not there yet.
acknowledgments
I spent a year during 2007 and 2008 in Berlin on a writer’s residency and I wish to thank Creative New Zealand for that opportunity— there is nothing like a new place to pull the scales away from one’s eyes. Thanks to the Goethe Institute in Wellington and Berlin for its encouragement and collegiality, and to Katja Koblitz, Franziska Rauchut and Ingo Petz in Berlin for their friendship and insight into the city and its past. A special note of gratitude to my publisher Michael Heyward at Text who showed tremendous faith in this project from its beginnings, and to my long-time agent and first reader Michael Gifkins and my editor Jane Pearson.
In chapter ten, Millennium Three quotes from Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem ‘Fear of the Inexplicable’. In chapter eight, the inspector describes a mother delivering her dead son to his place of burial in a wheelbarrow. I suspect this image owes a debt to a scene in ‘A woman in Berlin’, a war-time diary which I read during my time in Berlin.
Lloyd Jones, Hand Me Down World
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