An extract from Karlshafen: elegies and idylls.

A Picture of Helen

1.

In an envelope beside my bed I keep a small creased photograph of a girl. She is standing in front of a garden shed, with a lilac tree to the left and above it a line of tiled roofs. Behind her there are other gardens, full of flowers and small fruit trees, then an open field and the blue shadow of low hills in the distance. The girl is holding a white cat, whose nose she is tickling with an almost invisibly small flower. She is wearing sunglasses and smiling at the catÕs efforts to pull itself away from her. The photograph is a picture of Helen on her seventeenth birthday during the summer holidays of 1968 at her parentsÕ home in Wismar.

2.

From my window I can see a green park between two rivers. Now that the clocks have been turned forward, the sunset lights up the field at seven, when I come home. the trees still look bare at this distance, but their leaves are budding; in a month or so they will be green again.In Dusseldorf the linden trees along the Rhein park always seem to put out their leaves far earlier than the others in the city. I used to walk home from school beneath them each afternoon, my eyes almost hurting from the brightness of the green against the blue sky and the white buildings along the river. When the wind blows through them at early evening, the trees look as if they are made of broken glass. Even here I occasionally see couples walking through the park at this time of day, looking at the sunset through the empty branches, shading their eyes with their hands.

3.

One of my favourite films is called Kings of the Road. I donÕt recall much of the story, but the scenery is beautiful: a journey southwards along the border. It reminds me of one evening when we drove down the motorway to Dusseldorf. The air was full of ladybirds and as we swept along dozens of them hit the windscreen, leaving little red circles where their bodies had exploded against tha glass. Helen amused herself by counting their deaths out loud. She never talked much on long journeys, but preferred to sit there quietly with the radio on, gazing at the forests, hills amd towns as we flew past them. I could only marvel how the sunsetÕs pink and blue was changed into the rich golds on her helpless face as we raced on between the even fields of sugar beet by Munster, with the dark towers rising in the hazy distance.

4.

I often think I see Helen even now, in the faces of women who look nothing like her. Her mouth was small with a slight twist in the left corner from where she had a wisdom-tooth taken out; it could give her smiles a malicious look at times. she was very slim, almost breakable one felt, with nerves inside her bones that made her purr with delight. When I ran my fingers along her jagged little spine. Most of all I loved here eyes: they were clear and blue, like ice melting. She could see in the dark and was forever screwing them up in the daytime, so that they were wrinkled around the corners long before they should have been. When she cried her eyes were almost unbearably beautiful; I could hardly look into them without wanting to hurt her more.

5.

On my bedroom wall I have a framed print of WatteauÕs Figures in a Park. The print is old and creased in one corner and the glass is cracked from the lefthand side to the bottom of the picture, cutting through the trees and the red dress of a woman strolling arm in arm with her lover. The man is pointing to a beech tree in the distance, the evening sun shining though its leaves make them look golden or as if they were burning. The picture is painted in dark colours which have become even darker with age, making it hard to distinguish details. The best time to look at it is early evening, when the sunset enters the room and lights it from a certain angle, making the crack across the lovers seem invisible.

6.

Helen and I lived for a time in a flat in Ratzeburg, just by the border.On summer evenings we would often go for walks beside the lake, usually ending up at an inn called the Herrenhof, having a few drinks there before catching the bus back home. Once we spent the night there. The room was clean and quiet, with pictures of the saints on the walls; the window faced west and you could see the sun going downover the low hills coveres with purple heathland and yellow fields of rape. Helen stood in the window, her eyes closed against the sunlight, brushing her lips with some honeysuckle. I lay on the bed watching the patterns the lace day-curtains made against the light brown of her skin and the white of her bra. She took a tiny bite from one of the long creamy petals, then turned and spat: ItÕs not like honey at all, itÕs bitter.

7.

It was March when she left, one bright and windy evening. She was sitting on the bed when I came home, her things packed, waiting to say goodbye. I remember her fingers tracing circles on the coverlet as she talked, and the way her lipstick was smudged in one corner of her mouth. Golden light poured in through the windows. She left behind her two things, one by accident, one by design: she forgot to take her red dress, which I eventually gave to a girlfriend some years ago; and beneath her pillow (I never sleep with one) she had slipped a a photograph of herself in her pare