Arnon Grunberg: I Still Own Twenty Horses in Berlin

We were living in a hotel in Diisseldorf, where there was a memorialplaque fixed to the wall: "As a young poet, Heinrich Heine spent manyhappy years here." We had to take a photograph of that, of course, withme in front of it. Heine the young poet used to drive me nuts.

When I was still in elementary school, my father would sometimestake me along on his travels. He never stayed away for long, just a dayor two. On the train we would eat kosher sausage rolls he had filledhimself. But we ate nonkosher sausage as well, and lots of pancakes andpastries. In his opinion, that sort of food was every bit as good as ahot meal. He would meet people in cafes. The weather was hot. I wore myshort pants.

My father was bald. People took him for my grandfather. They wouldask, "Do you like going out with your grandpa?" We would go into somecafe where the man he had arranged to meet would be sitting. He'd beold and bald too. They would have a few vodkas. I'd get ice cream,never anything but ice cream. They would talk for hours. My fathernever told me what he talked about with all those bald men. When we hadfinished in the cafe, we would go to the fairground and eat porksausage. He said that God didn't care about one pork sausage more orless. God might not, but my mother did. In the evening we'd go toanother cafe, where we'd meet yet another old man, the kind who mighthave played God in a B movie. More vodkas would be drunk. My fatherwould get excited. His hair looked like straw. That was because he letit grow very long to cover the bald spot on his head, and when he gotexcited it would fall over his eyes. "To better times!" they wouldshout. My father would thump the table. No one paid any attention tohim. They all thumped the table in there. The talk would be about theMajdanek trial. Or maybe about the young poet Heine again, who knows.It was all pretty much the same thing. My mother thought I'd gone withhim to sell stamps, but I never saw a single one. I'd ask him if he'dsold any. He'd refuse to say. Not even to my mother. If you pressedhim, all he'd say was, "I could tell you a tale or two—any fool could."

For breakfast I would get hot chocolate, something I never got athome. Once we stood for a whole hour in a shopping mall listening to aman playing the accordion.

Another time we went to Brussels. We saw an accident there. An oldman with a cane was run over by a truck at a traffic light. It happenedvery slowly. The driver began to accelerate but didn't see him. Myfather waved his arms in the air and shouted, "Hey! Hey!" The driverpaid no attention to my father and the truck drove right over the oldman. We couldn't stay and watch because we were due in a cafe whereanother old man was waiting for my father. The cafes were always thekind where old men were the only people who ever came, and not too manyof them either. Even the waiters were ancient. And the fans turned tooslowly to be any use.

Brussels didn't have a fairground. In any case, I was never allowedto go on a roller coaster because my father was too scared to go on onehimself. He let me try the shooting, but I was never any good. Myfather always hit the target. Once he won a teddy bear for me, but whatwas I supposed to do with a teddy bear? He always took along a plasticshopping bag from the Albert Heijn grocery stores when we went to thosecafes. He said, "It's best to carry important things in plastic bags."Sometimes we'd have to wait for the other old men, who always stank ofgarlic just like my father. I would refuse to sit on their laps,because I wore short pants and their own pants tickled like mad, thesame as their cheeks.

Once we had to take some herring to an old man in Diissel-dorf. Wegot up early to lay in a stock of ten herrings from my father's herringman next to the stock exchange building. It was the kind of day whenmost people would rather be lying in a tub of ice-cold beer. My fatherwas wearing sunglasses, and later on in the train he joked with twogirls who were sitting with us in the compartment. Just past Oberhausenthe compartment began to stink of herring. My father had put theherring in the baggage rack. He always carried a small black bottlewith a gold top on his travels. It was filled with eau de cologne orsomething that looked like it. He pulled the black bottle out of hisinside pocket and began to sprinkle the walls of the compartment withthe cologne, to the great amusement of the girls, who slapped theirknees. My father seemed to be enjoying himself, too. Besides the bottlehe always brought along a book, the same book each time, an Englishtextbook. It was the most well-thumbed book I have ever seen, and it'sa mystery to me why he never lost it, since he lost almost everythingelse on his travels. He even lost me a few times. Just beforeDusseldorf, the air in our compartment became unbearable, despite thecologne. He pulled the chopped onions and the cucumber pickles and theherring out of his bag. He let the girls take a whiff, he sniffed ithimself, and then he flung the herring out of the moving train onto thetrack. That compartment must have reeked like the inside of a herringbarrel for days afterwards.

My father told us, "In the old days our family would all eat out ofa single pan, and they'd turn out the light before they began so thateveryone could start on equal terms. Some days they had to make soupfrom the smell of last week's meat."

When I was twelve, the travels suddenly stopped, or perhaps I wasn't welcome on them anymore.

After my father died, we did indeed find a safe full of stamps,although not as many as we had expected. We won't have to buy any forthe rest of our lives, no matter what country we're in. My mother hasforbidden me to use them, though. It seems they may be worth quite alot. I'll believe that when I see it. He also turned out to be theowner of twenty horses. In Berlin. A riding school for the disabled.Acquired in 1965. It occurred to me that my father probably bought thehorses so we could all get some exercise. That was an odd idea, since Icouldn't really see my father, my mother, me, or my sister on a horse.My mother was terribly upset. "What am I supposed to do with twentyhorses?" she cried. "Aren't the stamps enough?"

We managed to get rid of the riding school. A lawyer fixed it allup. "It had been losing money for years," he told us. "Not a soul wentthere anymore, not a single solitary soul. It beats me why he hung onto it for so long." We got next to nothing for it. No one wanted thehorses. Later it turned out that a lot of them were ponies. It's easierfor the disabled to get up onto them or something. I said to my mother,"You could sing a song: 'I still own twenty horses in Berlin.' " Ididn't get much of a laugh with that.

In the old days we used to go to Berlin quite often. We had an auntin an old age home there. We went to see her just about every summer,and we'd stay in the old age home ourselves. A whole summer in an oldage home! Summers in Berlin can be hot. The people in that home droppedlike flies. In the afternoon we would all go to the cake shop and eatlike pigs. Me too. As far as I was concerned we could have stayed inBerlin forever, just for the cakes. Now and again we'd go to Wannseebeach. When my mother wasn't looking, my father and I would get somepork sausage and potato salad from huge tubs. Dripping with fat, butthe most delicious I've ever eaten. My aunt would be there, too, withher parasol, because she was afraid of the sun.

We all had to go to Israel, where my sister lives, for my father'sfuneral. We couldn't bury him in Amsterdam, because my sister wasn'tallowed to fly. She was nine months pregnant. The baby was due anyminute. So we took the body to her. Via Rome, because it had to be donequickly and there was no direct flight that day.

Finally we arrived at Ben-Gurion airport, having spent all daytraveling. My mother never stopped moaning the whole time: "I killedhim, I killed him." Until I said, "Shut up, or I'll kill you."

We waited in Arrivals. "Where is my husband's coffin?" my motherasked. "It'll be here in a moment," they said. "You understand—we can'tsend it down with the ordinary baggage."

We waited with my sister. One hour, two hours. They brought uscoffee. Another hour. The whole plane must have been cleared by thattime. They brought us more coffee. They called Rome. The coffin wasstill in Rome. "No panic, nothing's wrong, it's simply been left behindin Rome. That can happen, what with all the transfers. It'll be here onthe very next plane."

My mother burst into tears. I thought, Now my sister's going to give birth, right here in Ben-Gurion.

I shouted, "We'll all go to Rome. We'll bury him in Rome. Rome, herewe come." All that crying was making me nervous. And my sister's laborpains.

He arrived the next morning. We buried him right away. They hurtledto Jerusalem with him because it was Friday and you're not allowed tobury people on a Saturday.

Then we sat on boxes for a week eating bean soup. That was becausemy sister's friends were under the mistaken impression that we werecrazy about bean soup. You are not allowed to do your own cooking whenyou are in mourning, but actually I'd rather eat nothing at all thaneat bean soup every day.

A week later 1 flew back to Amsterdam, and with my mother's power of attorney in my pocket 1 sold the horses.