One Grand Summer E-Book

Ewald Arenz

• Herausgeber: Orenda Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 401

Beschreibung

When he fails his exams, 16-year-old Frieder is forced to stay with his grandparents for the summer, leading to an unforgettable and profound series of experiences that will change him forever. `Ewald Arenz writes with gentle joy´ Iona Gray `A tender and profound coming-of-age story that's also a gripping page-turner. Gorgeously written … an absolute tour de force´ Louisa Treger `A summer of joys and sadness … funny, touching, troubling´ Saga magazine **German Independent Booksellers' Book of the Year** **Tasting Sunlight is a BBC World Service WORLD BOOK CLUB PICK** _____ Sixteen-year-old Frieder's plans for the summer are shattered when he fails two subjects. In order to move up to the next school year in the Autumn, he must resit his exams. So, instead of going on holiday with his family, he now faces the daunting and boring prospect of staying at his grandparents' house, studying with his strict and formal step-grandfather. On the bright side, he'll spend time with his grandmother Nana, his sister Alma and his best friend Johann. And he meets Beate, the girl in the beautiful green swimsuit… The next few weeks will bring friendship, fear and first love – one grand summer that will change and shape his entire life. Heartbreaking, poignant and warmly funny, One Grand Summer is an unforgettable, tender novel that captures those exquisite and painful moments that make us who we are. For readers who loved Sarah Winman's When God Was a Rabbit __________ Praise for Ewald Arenz `Profound in its simplicity … a remarkable, exquisitely written debut´ Irish Times `Hopeful and poignant and lyrically told. A truly compassionate and heartening book´ Culturefly `Poetic in places and highly sensory … a genuinely hopeful and open-hearted novel´ Irish Times `This reminded me of reading Sally Rooney's Normal People. It takes a writer of immeasurable talent to make you feel that intensely´ Elizabeth Haynes `Powerful, original and engaging´ Susie Boyt `Written with beautiful simplicity´ Doug Johnstone `A triumph. Don't miss it´ Louisa Treger `Powerful, lyrical and profoundly affecting´ Miranda Dickinson `An exquisitely written, heart-warming story´ Gill Paul `Moving and heart-wrenching, but ultimately uplifting´ Carol Lovekin

Leseprobe

iSixteen-year-old Frieder’s plans for the summer are shattered when he fails two subjects. To be able to move up to the next year in the autumn, he needs to resit his exams. So instead of going on holiday with his family, he now faces the daunting and boring prospect of staying at his grandparents’ house, studying with his strict and formal step-grandfather.

On the bright side, he’ll spend time with his grandmother, Nana, his sister, Alma, and his best friend, Johann. And he meets Beate, the girl in the beautiful green swimsuit…

The next few weeks will bring friendship, fear and first love – one grand summer that will change and shape his entire life.

A number-one bestseller in Germany and winner of the German Booksellers Prize, One Grand Summer is a moving, beautiful and profound novel about relationships and respect that captures those exquisite and painful moments that make us who we are…

iii

One Grand Summer

EWALD ARENZ Translated by Rachel Ward

Contents

Title Page1234567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829303132333435363738394041About the AuthorAbout the TranslatorAlso by Ewald Arenz and available from Orenda BooksCopyright

1

1

If any of us four was going to make it to Rio de Janeiro, it would have been Johann. In a way, that was clear from the start. Johann had what it took, and besides, he was the musician. If anyone was going to make it, it would have been Johann.

I used to sit next to him, back then. The sound of the cemetery chapel bell drifted in through the open classroom window. In the hazy distance, above the line of tower blocks beyond the river meadows, was an aeroplane. The sri sri of the swifts sliced the light of this summer’s day into bright-yellow, thrillingly sharp discs of lemon, and I thought it was time for being outside, not sitting in here next to the window. Outside, beyond the river, and then heading north, towards the sea, where you could board a ship to South America.

Half past nine in the morning was the worst time. You’d got two lessons behind you by then, but there were at least four still to go.

Johann was doodling, filling his exercise book with zeros. He’d been doing that since the start of Latin.

‘Come on, let’s write the longest number in the world.’

It was the utmost idiocy, but kind of cool all the same. We took it in turns, completing ten lines at a time. Three zeros, a space, three more zeros. We’d long gone past the point where our number had a name. It had thousands of zeros and was almost a whole school year long. Sometimes we passed the book around at break, and the others were freaked out, didn’t know what to make of us, couldn’t decide if it was a great idea or just daft.

Johann nudged me and nodded towards the window. He’d only 2just noticed the bell ringing. He hadn’t even known that it was a funeral bell until I told him so.

‘Still sounds like freedom,’ he’d said.

I thought he was right.

Zippo’s voice was like a dark carpet across the classroom. I liked Zippo and his voice. A soothing, melancholy bass. A voice that could lull you to sleep, unless of course you happened to be waiting for a make-or-break exam result.

‘Why is he doing this?’ I whispered to Johann. ‘Why doesn’t he just hand the things out? He’s not normally an arsehole.’

Johann gave an uninterested shrug. ‘No idea. Maybe it’s the regulations or something. Maybe it says in the school rules somewhere that you have to discuss exam papers before you can hand them back.’

Zippo talked through the mistakes. Every single one of them went up on the OHP, along with the right answer. Then he wrote the pass mark on the board and totted up everyone’s grades; now I got the first twinges in my belly. There were one very good, four good, sixteen satisfactory, six adequate, two poor and two inadequate. Four fails out of thirty-one. I knew at least one person among the bottom four. And it wasn’t Johann.

Zippo’s real name was Mr Zigankenberg, but nobody ever called him that. Even so, ‘Zippo’ was too short a name for the man. Six foot six tall and a good sixteen stone. Should have been a boxer or a wrestler. Not a Latin teacher, at any rate.

Johann wouldn’t let anyone call him Joe.

‘Johann. Not Yo or Joe or anything. Johann.’

That’s what he said to Dlouha just after we’d started at the school, when he came out with ‘Joe’. He only had to say it once. There was something so serious about him that it was kind of intimidating sometimes. From then on, everyone called him Johann.

3‘I know I’ve got a six.’

One was the best, six was the worst. So it was a kind of incantation. By saying that, you hoped to ward it off, that the words would magically get you a five, or even a four. You never knew.

‘Bollocks,’ said Johann.

‘Like you really believe that,’ I said. Another incantation.

I looked outside. The swifts. The morning light in the long willow leaves down by the river. The blue blue blue. Why did the world’s beauty stop at the windowsill? Out there was everything. In here was nothing.

‘Albert.’

Finally! Zippo was handing back the papers. Alphabetical order. Of course. Order is everything. At least he hadn’t sorted them by grade. Everyone hated that. Except the swots.

‘Bergmann.’

The classroom was noisy now. Obviously. Hey, what did you get? I got a three. Phew, I thought … It wasn’t all that difficult, was it? I thought…

I didn’t say another word, just looked out of the window again. Sometimes you could smell the water. It didn’t smell as salty as the sea, but hey.

‘Büchner.’

That was me. Zippo walked back through the room towards us. There was no reading his face. He handed me the paper.

‘Sorry, Büchner,’ he said, ‘I can’t understand what happened. Your translation reads very elegantly. But sadly, it bears no resemblance to the original Latin text.’

If that was meant to be funny, it wasn’t. Six. I might have just scraped through the year if I’d got a five, but with a six … I was crap at maths, but even I could figure out an average. Maths: five. Latin: five. So that was that.

4‘It’s fine,’ I said indifferently.

Johann leant over to me. His shoulder touched mine.

‘Sorry.’

‘Nah, it’s fine. I knew it.’

I folded the exam paper carefully and precisely into an aeroplane. Even added stern flaps. I angled the nose down a touch. Suddenly, the num in numquam looked hilarious. I had to laugh, despite everything.

‘Hey ho,’ I said. ‘Failed.’

I tipped my chair back until it touched the wall. I turned the paper plane in my hand.

‘You can resit after the summer.’

I shrugged. ‘Reckon I can cram up on three years of Latin in six weeks? I’m sunk in maths anyway. And when I say “sunk”, I mean “sunk”. A thousand metres down. Mariana trench.’

Johann couldn’t help laughing. ‘I can help you.’

‘Sure. You know what’ll happen then. And it won’t be revision.’

Zippo came back to us.

‘Lohmann.’

He handed Johann his paper with a brief nod. Johann took it and glanced hastily at the mark. Three minus. He was almost embarrassed by it; he put it face down on the desk. I looked at Zippo, and now he spotted the plane in my hand for the first time. I didn’t even straighten up my chair as I sent it flying out of the window. The very gentlest flick of the wrist. It glided through the willows in a perfect spiral. Hit a branch, spun, turned upright again and landed in the water. Bye.

Zippo looked at me and I took a deep breath, but all he said was: ‘As if you didn’t have problems enough, Büchner.’

He turned and walked back to his desk. Six feet six and sixteen stone of Latin. I couldn’t help myself; the man was right.

5

2

It’s a quiet afternoon. Yet again, I’m searching for the grave. The October sun is a fuzzy dot, shining ember-red through the early mist. It’s cold. The chestnut trees lining the path are yet to fully change colour, but the sycamore is starting to brighten. The staghorns by the cemetery wall are already glowing as red as if they were waiting for snow.

You’d think that a cemetery would always look the same. After all, hardly anything happens here. A few gravestones get added. Maybe a new path gets laid. But that’s not how it is. Either that, or I always forget where the grave is. It’s not like I come every year. But I think I come often enough. It’s just that I never find the grave first go. Maybe this time, I ought to take a photo of the number. Or make a note of the location on my phone for next time. But then again – what for? I have no need to come when I haven’t got time to look for it.

There isn’t a soul in the cemetery, but there are squirrels everywhere. There can’t be many places in this city that suit them better. No cars, no people. This whole place and all its trees, just for them. Paradise. Can squirrels grieve? They don’t give that impression.

Can I? I don’t know if the emotion that drives me over here now and then is grief or something else. It often happens in autumn, that’s true enough. But is it grief? Sometimes I don’t know what I truly lost, what I’m really mourning when I seek out the grave. Maybe it’s that one year, the one we shared back then. No. It wasn’t even a year. It was that one summer, the kind you probably only get once in a lifetime. I hope everyone gets to have that one summer; that one summer when everything changes. Yes. Maybe it’s more than grief;6maybe, above all, it’s a yearning for that summer – for the irretrievable, tremblingly beautiful magic of the first times.

Swimming. Luckily for me, my parents weren’t as uptight as Johann’s. But maybe even my father – who lacked any real interest in his children’s school careers – had actually noticed at some point that I wasn’t going to pass the year.

‘We’ll think of something,’ he said. There was no danger in that, though. Dad was always thinking of things, but they never had any practical use. I mean, my mum gave him pocket money! If he thought of anything, it wouldn’t mean much at all. If Mum was going to think of something, then I’d be in trouble. But nothing had happened yet.

I’d sometimes go to the outdoor pool when it was raining. You got the place to yourself. The whole pool. The lifeguard was generally at his most relaxed and would let you take flippers into the full-length pool, or open the diving tower for you. After that, he’d sometimes say hello to you, even on a Sunday, when the place was full to overflowing. I loved being at the lido in the rain because it was different.

There was a steady drizzle now, but it wasn’t cold. There was a steady drip from the poplars dotted across the broad meadows. The smell of grass on the still air. No wind. It was a very special atmosphere. A bit like you were in a whole different city. Or more like there was suddenly something kind of mysterious about this very public place, as if nobody else could even find it now.

I walked barefoot over the rain-wet grass to the diving pool. Next to it, a couple of old folks were doing lengths of the fifty-metre pool. Not bothering anyone. This still, pale-grey, rainy air soothed everything. I recognised a few faces. They were probably there every day. What kind of life was that? To the pool every day. 7Swim twenty lengths every day. Go home again every day. Shit. Would we end up like that some day?

I put my towel down at the bottom of the diving tower, nodded to the lifeguard and began to climb. The seven-point-five today. It was a kind of bet with myself. That summer, I wanted to work up to diving from the ten-metre board. Weirdly, I’d found the three the hardest. I’d kept chickening out until eventually I fell off the board as I turned and, like an idiot, hit my face on the water so that I had to go around with it bright red for the rest of the day. Then, it suddenly clicked. Things were sometimes like that for me. I’d always been scared of big dogs until, one day, on my paper round, I got bitten. After that, the fear was gone. Maybe because once a thing became reality, it was never as bad as it had been in your imagination. I could imagine absolutely anything, and sometimes that was the whole problem.

My first dive off the fiver went so smoothly that from then on, I kept diving from there. No problem. And now, I was climbing up to the seven-point-five for the first time. The rungs of the ladder were rough, wet and chilly. I shivered slightly, stepped forward a touch and stood there, where the handrail stopped. A metre from the edge. It was high. It was bloody high. I’d been planning to do a backflip. Backflips looked cool, but they were the easiest dives of all. All you had to do was be brave. But here … I looked down. Wow. This must be about three storeys up. And it was like my first time on the three. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even stand at the edge. Least of all backward. I looked over to the lifeguard to see if he was watching me, but he was sitting under his giant umbrella, reading the newspaper.

Maybe just jump straight off?

‘Hey, lost your nerve?’

I was so startled, I actually twitched. You just don’t expect 8anyone else to climb up the diving tower in the rain and come to stand behind you. I turned around. I hadn’t heard her coming. She was about my age. A bottle-green swimsuit. Dark hair. And pretty. Very pretty.

‘No, course not.’

Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Why did I say that?

‘If you’re scared, we can dive together.’

‘Have you ever dived from up here?’

I was scared, actually, but now I was more afraid that she might plunge elegantly off the board, do a header or a twist or something, and I’d be left hanging around up here like a … like a whatever.

She shook her head. ‘Nu-uh. I saw you standing there so I waited. I wanted to see what you’d do. But you didn’t dive.’

There was a smile in her voice. I couldn’t tell if it was mocking.

‘Sure, we can dive together.’

I’d said it too hesitantly. I bet I sounded like a coward.

But all she said was, ‘OK then,’ as she stepped to the edge. OK. My turn now.

‘One,’ I counted.

‘It’s a long way down,’ she said.

She looked over to me. I had to laugh. Turned out we were both shit-scared.

‘OK. Let’s go down to the fiver.’

She laughed now too. Relief flooded through me, as quickly as the fear had before. We turned and walked back to the ladder. But then she stopped abruptly.

‘OK, no. That’s not an option,’ she said, ‘that’s really not an option. Come on!’

She turned again, ran and jumped. Shit, I thought, and I ran too, fell helter-skelter through the empty air and crashed on my 9side against the water, so hard that it took my breath away. I went down deep, deeper than I liked, fought my way up and snorted water out of my nose as I surfaced. She shot up beside me and flung her head back to get her hair out of her face.

‘I bruised my legs,’ she laughed.

‘I bruised my side,’ I said breathlessly. ‘Friedrich. My name’s Friedrich.’

‘Beate. Cool name you’ve got there. But kind of old-fashioned?’

We swam to the edge of the pool. The rain was drawing a thousand rings on the water. The hush of the pool wrapped itself around us like a smooth, invisible towel. The folded parasols on the terrace by the kiosk marched single file like forgotten, pensive soldiers. The kiosk was shut, as if it were sleeping. For a moment, it really did all belong to us.

‘I’ve got weird parents,’ I explained as we climbed out of the pool.

‘Uh-huh,’ she said.

She had green eyes.

10

3

Sometimes, coming home was like abruptly switching from one world to another. Almost every time I opened the door, there was background noise. Sometimes cheerful, sometimes furious. One of the dogs barking, or one of my sisters playing the flute, or Alma hammering in the corner of the hallway where she’d turned an old cupboard into a mini workshop. Our flat was too small. Six kids. Two dogs. And two cats. As if my parents were so broad-minded they could wilfully disregard the cramped confines of our flat. It was wonderful if, at that moment, you wanted to be part of a colourful, noisy whole. It was awful if you wanted to be an individual.

And you were immediately sucked into it all. Inwardly, I was still at the quiet lido. In the rain. Standing next to a girl in a bottle-green swimsuit. So I had to hurriedly shut a door inside me, like that of a church. Because noise didn’t belong in a church. My little brother Kolja came and took me by the hand: play ludo. From inside the church, looking out, you could watch on as you made the little ones laugh. Comforted them when they were almost home but got knocked back to the start. Did she have brothers or sisters?

‘You lose!’

Triumphant. For Kolja, it felt like a real victory. His pride was genuine and so was his joy. He didn’t know that I’d let him win. That he’d been happily cheated. It was still cheating, though, wasn’t it? I went to my room.

I didn’t have a stereo like Johann’s. I had an orange plastic record player with a crappy speaker, which Mum had once given 11me as a birthday present. Hey ho. It was OK for listening to music in the evening, but there was never enough oomph behind it for a party. Johann had an amp and some kind of special speaker system. His record player was a heavy thing in silver-grey metal and looked seriously expensive. I did also have a cassette recorder, but if I wanted to tape an LP, I had to put the recorder on my bed because the cable wasn’t long enough.

I started up the record player and threw myself onto the bed. I wouldn’t have the bedroom to myself for long. The bed was positioned so that I could see out of the window. There was a robinia outside. I’d looked it up some time ago in one of the thousands of books that belonged to my dad because I’d wanted to know the name of the tree that gave off such a sweet, weightless scent. I didn’t know of anything else that smelled as transparent and yet as all-encompassing as the robinia blossom.

The window was open, it was still raining. And suddenly, the music seemed out of tune. It was a record I liked – music that my mum used to listen to when I was little. Cheesy pop songs that made me smile, felt like home. But they suddenly sounded wrong. I tried a different LP. I didn’t have nearly as many on my shelf as Johann, and now none of them fitted. It wasn’t exactly that I wasn’t in the mood for New Orleans jazz, or the Jethro Tull record my brother had lent me. It was just that all of it seemed out of tune. As if the notes were telling a story that I didn’t relate to anymore. Everything was … kind of nice, but totally meaningless. I picked up the pop record and sent it sailing out of the window like a frisbee.

Kolja burst in without knocking.

‘You have to come to dinner.’

‘I’m not hungry, kiddo.’

Kolja left the door open and ran into the dining room, only to 12pop back around the corner ten seconds later. He was a little goblin.

‘Mama says you have to come anyway. She wants to talk to you about something.’

I got up off the bed. That didn’t sound good.

‘To Grandfather’s?’

I was totally blindsided. As usual, I hadn’t been thinking ahead or working out what might happen next, but even so, this suggestion was a bombshell. The noise level around the table dropped a little, because this concerned everybody. For the first time ever, one of us – namely me – wouldn’t be going on the family holiday.

‘That’s so rubbish!’ Lucie, my youngest sister. Eight years old and precocious, always getting on her classmates’ nerves. Most of the time, I found her funny.

My friends treated us like some kind of zoo. No other family had this many children. I didn’t know anyone with more than two siblings.

‘You can’t be serious,’ I said. Six weeks! The whole summer holidays with my grandfather. Out of everyone in the world. I mean, I loved my grandmother, Nana. She was incredible. But, to be honest, my grandfather just scared me.

‘I’m deadly serious,’ my mother replied. Her tone was pleasant, but she was standing firm on this. ‘You can’t repeat the year twice. If you don’t pass the resits, you’ll have to leave school with no qualifications.’

‘I can study on holiday.’

OK, even I didn’t actually believe that.

‘Mama, really. Grandfather? I can … I can stay here and study. Then nobody will distract me. Alma will be here too. We can both just …’

13My mum wasn’t going for it.

‘Alma will be living at the nurses’ home while she’s doing her work experience. And even if she wasn’t, the two of you in the flat alone here for six weeks? No. You can have your own room up at Nana’s. She’ll be there too.’

Great. Six weeks with the man I’d had to call ‘Herr Professor’ until I was ten. Herr Professor. My mother’s stepfather. The whole family was scared of him. Except her, perhaps. My summer holidays were over.

14

4

‘Are you stupid or what?’

Johann was finding it funny. Quarter past seven in the morning. It was still chilly and we were standing in the phone box at the tram station. I was hunting through the phone book. You wouldn’t believe how many Endreses there were in this town. I didn’t reply. Johann rolled himself a cigarette and pushed the door open a crack as he lit it.

‘Why didn’t you ask her where she lived?’

Yeah. Why didn’t I ask her where she lived?

‘Don’t know.’

How to explain that I couldn’t have asked her because that would have shown her that I was interested in her? But then again, that was the whole point. I was interested in her. So why didn’t I want her to know that? Another possible reason for not asking was that she hadn’t asked me. What was that – don’t ask and you can’t be disappointed? Because she might not be interested in you? Great strategy. At least I knew her surname. I’d managed that much, just before we went our separate ways at the entrance.

‘Are you going to be long?’ A woman knocked impatiently at the door. Like we hadn’t heard her. Wearing this flowery house dress. No blouse, no tights or anything. Just the pinny. If my mum ever wore a thing like that, I’d kill her. Or myself. End of the world.

Johann stuck his head out. ‘So sorry, ma’am,’ he said, incredibly politely, ‘we’ll just be another minute, OK?’

Johann could put on such an innocent face, people believed anything he said. It made him look like a child. Except for the 15cigarette, which didn’t fit the picture. The woman banged hard on the window again.

‘I’m done,’ I shouted, ripping all the pages with the name Endres on them straight out of the book.

‘What would happen if everybody did that, hey?’ the flowery smock shouted after us in outrage. We ran away, laughing.

If I could have had my way, I wouldn’t have gone to school for the last two weeks before the holidays. The real work had all been done and the only things that happened in that time were watching films in the biology room and skiving off the class hike. Only the strictest teachers carried on with proper lessons. Dr Ott, for example. Always Dr Ott, not plain Mrs Ott. I’d never have pulled anything like the paper plane stunt in her class. Not for fear of being punished. It was simply that things like that didn’t occur to you around her. And you didn’t forget her homework either. She had a way of looking at you and then asking, with great concern, how such a thing could have happened.

‘Were you ill, Monsieur Büchner? Was there a problem at home?’

She addressed everyone like that from class nine upward. I think it was a genuine surprise to her, every single time, that anything short of an earthquake in the city could make anyone forget to do their homework. It was a genuine disbelief, a genuine disappointment at a piece of impossible behaviour, and that always made you feel bad. Such things didn’t happen in her world – and after a week, they didn’t happen in her classroom either. At any rate, I’d scraped a four from her in French, for all the good that that would do me.

It was hard not to pay full attention in her lessons, but I’d slipped the phone-book pages into my French textbook and was scanning through them.

16‘Are you going to ring them all?’ Even Johann whispered in Dr Ott’s classes.

‘I’ll look up the ones who live near the pool. She walked there, I think.’

I was a bit proud of that idea. I’d also brought along a town plan from my father’s bookshelves.

‘She could have come by tram.’ Johann grinned at me.

‘Don’t shatter my illusions,’ I hissed, but of course I hadn’t thought of that. Shit.

‘Monsieur Büchner!’

I hastily slammed my French book shut.

‘Voulez-vous nous faire part de vos réflexions?’

‘No, Dr Ott. Sorry.’

Yes, Dr Ott, I would, actually. I’m going to fail the year and basically, who gives a damn if I talk in your lesson. I have no idea why I’m even still here. I met a girl with a surprisingly common surname and was too stupid to ask her where she lives. And I’ve got no idea what this is all about and why I’m not in Brazil. In Rio de Janeiro. Among the greenery somewhere at the foot of Sugarloaf Mountain between the sea and the hills, and there’s music everywhere in the air. It’s not coming from anywhere. There’s no band and no radio and no loudspeakers. The music’s just in the air, surrounding me, no matter where I go. And it’s always the perfect melody.

Johann slipped me a note. There was a wobbly drawing of a hat, underneath which was a smouldering cigarette. Johann was an amazing musician but pretty crap at drawing. Under the hat it said: We have to hit the streets again, Sam. Poolside enquiries tomorrow afternoon?

I had to smile as I passed the note back: ‘Can’t. Got to go to Grandfather’s.’

17‘Have fun,’ Johann breathed, without moving his lips.

At the front, Dr Ott was explaining the future perfect.

J’aurai aimé. I would have loved.

What a fantastic prospect.

18

5

We were standing by the fence in the lower playground. Johann was smoking. The school had two playgrounds. The new building had a large, expansive area with a climbing frame and lots of metal benches. That was for the younger kids. The rest of us were in the lower playground. It was part of the old building and ran right down to the river. It was cobbled and in the centre was a lime tree that they must have planted when the school was built. 1894. The Humanistisch-neusprachliches Lessing-Gymnasium, to give it its full name. The city’s best grammar school, known once upon a time for teaching the humanities and modern languages. And Friedrich Büchner couldn’t hack it. Too many other interests, Zippo had said, that’s your trouble, Büchner. Yes. Thank you. I was aware of that.

Class seven biology had taught me that this was a lime tree. We even had a fountain down here, but there was no water in it these days. I liked the playground. Somehow, I liked the idea that eighty years ago, or more, people had stood here by the fence, looking over the river. And that it had looked exactly as it did now.

‘I just can’t imagine not being here anymore,’ I said.

‘I thought you wanted to go to Brazil,’ Johann replied.

‘Someday I will, for real, but I don’t quite have enough money yet. Can you lend me some?’

‘I’d love to, but you’re not worth that much to me.’

I punched him in the side.

‘Are you going away in the holidays? It’ll kill me. Six weeks with my grandfather. You have no idea what that means.’

‘Yes I have,’ said Johann drily. ‘I went round there once, don’t 19you remember? “Don’t mistake your common or garden atheism for the capacity for logical thought. You have a way to go yet!”’

That made us both laugh. The line had become a catchphrase between us.

Grandfather had examined Johann the way he examined everyone. I’d brought my friend to meet my grandmother. I’d always thought Nana was great. No, that didn’t do justice to the feeling. I … kind of adored her. And I’d never understand what she’d seen in this hard man, how she could ever have fallen in love with him. Grandfather had, for whatever reason, come home from work at the hospital earlier than normal, still in his white coat, and we’d bumped into him in the front garden. I’d had no choice but to introduce Johann to him.

‘Johann, uh-huh. Do you know where the name comes from?’

He’d been very formal with Johann. Not out of politeness, but rather to keep him at a distance. Like he’d made us call him ‘professor’. Like it had been years before he accepted Mum.

I hadn’t warned Johann because I hadn’t been expecting to see Grandfather. But Johann did his best.

‘From the Bible,’ he said, ‘unfortunately.’ The church wasn’t really his thing.

Without even pausing for breath, Grandfather said the bit about Johann’s atheism and his capacity for logical thought. Then we were left standing there in the garden and I had to hastily catch the front door behind Herr Professor before it shut in our faces.

‘Have a nice time at the Logical Grandfather Sanatorium,’ Johann said now. ‘I’ll be away for a fortnight but I can come and pull you out of the swamp of the bourgeoisie if need be. So long as your grandfather’s not at home.’

‘Thanks for nothing,’ I said. Leaning against the fence, we looked across the river into the distance. All around us, the 20playground was buzzing with conversations and laughter, and also with actual bees. The caretaker kept a few hives in his little private garden beside the playground.

‘What if nothing ever happens?’ Johann asked thoughtfully, after a while.

I understood him.

‘You mean this feeling that everyone’s only ever waiting? The way we think everything’s still ahead of us? That this can’t be real life yet because we’re still at school and living at home and stuff?’

He didn’t answer right away, but I could tell that that was roughly it.

‘Maybe it’s not even worth it. The wait, I mean.’ His voice sounded so light. But it wasn’t.

‘Maybe,’ I said. But then I thought about Rio de Janeiro. About the scent of the robinia in the early summer. About the girl with the green eyes. ‘But maybe it is.’

Suddenly, Alma was standing beside us. She was wearing a DIY tie-dyed T-shirt that had turned one of my white shirts purple forever because our mother had forgotten it was in the washing machine. Alma was a year younger than me but an academic year ahead of me. I’d had to repeat class five, which put us in together for a few years, but she’d moved up to class ten this year, while I was stuck repeating class nine. I missed her in lessons. Not just because she was way cleverer than me. Alma was cool. Old-fashioned name, Beate would probably have said. Yes, I’d have answered again, we’ve got weird parents.

‘Shall we run away?’ Alma asked as she saw us there by the fence. She squeezed in between us. ‘Gold Coast?’

We let her into the middle. It had always been that way. It would always be that way. We belonged together.

‘Sounds tempting,’ Johann said with careful politeness, ‘but to 21preserve my high moral standards, I’d prefer to get another two hours of pointless mathematics behind me first.’

Alma laughed. ‘You’re so square!’

She took Johann’s cigarette and dragged on it.

‘One more week, boys,’ she said cheerfully.

‘Thanks for the reminder,’ I replied.

The bell rang. Break was over. Alma linked arms with us both and we walked back to our classrooms.

22

6

It would probably have been sensible to start revising even before the holidays. Then I might not have had as much to do over those six weeks, and might have had a real chance of passing the resits. But I couldn’t do it. Somehow, I felt like those last few days of term had suddenly become my real holiday. The last days before I’d have to knuckle down for a month and a half. I kept pushing the thought aside. And trying to squeeze as much into this time as possible.

Sports day was in the last week of term. Alma and I had made a banner, and now we were outside our block of flats, waiting for Johann. Alma was sitting on her saddle, no hands, one foot on the crossbar, resting her back against a lamppost and keeping the bike balanced as she rolled a cigarette. The sun stood in the sky above the silhouette of the city. It was as though the TV aerials had been carved out of light in the sky over the rooftops. The crown of the chestnut tree in the front garden towered over Alma.

‘Sometimes I wish I could paint,’ I said.

‘Why?’

Alma had dropped her cigarette papers and was trying to pick the packet up again without getting off the bike. It looked way less elegant than if she’d just got down.

‘Because then I could paint the things that I see.’

Alma lurched and hastily caught herself. But she did now dismount to pick up the papers.

‘But it’s there either way,’ she said simply. ‘You don’t have to paint it.’

That was true. But what you saw wasn’t all there was. I didn’t know how to express it.

23‘Well in that case, nobody has to write any books or paint any pictures or make any music. It’s just …’

I thought for a moment. Alma had sat back up on her bike and lit the cigarette. The smoke wafted over to me. I didn’t smoke, but just then, that waft was like a wistful invitation to a wonderful, distant land, and I suddenly knew what I wanted to say.

‘Everything is there. But all this, this summer morning, and the leaves above you, and you, sitting casually on your bike and smoking and looking cool, it’s … it’s like you have to paint it all first so that you can take it in for a moment. So that you can feel what it is that makes this moment special.’

‘You don’t have to paint,’ Alma repeated. ‘You can say it. Here comes Johann.’

She pointed up the hill. He was hurtling down towards us, past the abandoned petrol station, his hair flying and his jacket flapping. He braked right at the last minute.

‘What ho, chaps,’ he said. ‘What’s that thing?’ He was pointing at our banner.

‘You’ll see when we get it onto the track. You’ll have to hold one of the poles.’

Johann twitched the fabric. Alma raised the sticks. He grinned.

‘Something like “This Sportsground Is Being Refurbished”?’

Alma sighed.

‘The impatience of impetuous youth. You’ll find out soon enough.’

She pushed off from the lamppost and slowly started to freewheel down the pavement. Johann and I followed.

It was already hot at the sportsground. We chained our bikes together and strolled over to the stands, to Fritsch, who was watching the whole thing, clipboard in hand. Once a year, PE 24teachers were kings. The rest of the time, nobody took them seriously, least of all at our school. Latin and Greek teachers ruled there, by miles. Modern languages, maths, chemistry, biology – they ranked in the middle. They were necessary, and might even have something to tell us. At the bottom were art and ethics and social studies and economics and PE … Who needed those?

‘Red Front, Mr Fritsch,’ I greeted him, raising my left fist. ‘We’re here.’

Fritsch barely looked up as he ticked off our names. ‘Spare me your juvenile politics, Büchner. The hundred metres starts at ten forty-five.’

‘Aye aye, cap’n,’ Alma replied briskly.

Fritsch became unexpectedly worked up. ‘Think the summer holidays have begun already, don’t you? Nobody has any respect for anybody unless it affects their grades, and that’s a fact. If you don’t like it here, you can go somewhere else.’

‘Right you are,’ Alma said promptly, pointing over to the lime trees across the track, forming the boundary between the sportsground and the park. ‘How about over there in the shade?’

Johann gave Fritsch a sympathetic nod. ‘Yeah. Must be hell up here on the stand, in the full sun.’

But he wasn’t in the mood to dilly-dally with us anymore. ‘Beat it. Ten forty-five, Büchner, ten forty-five.’

There were rumours that Fritsch was a repressed Nazi. Must have been in the Hitler Youth or something. Who else would be a PE teacher? But I didn’t believe it. I thought he was just trying to be brisk but couldn’t quite pull it off. Alma had already made him sweat. Mind you, she could run rings around anybody. Sometimes I thought she was way braver than me. I bet Alma would have dived off the seven-point-five without batting an eyelid. Either that or she’d never have climbed up in the first place. 25There was an air of confidence about most things she did. In all the time we were in the same class, I’d never had to make a note of what homework we were given. I could always rely on Alma to have done it. But she wasn’t a swot. It was just that she was better at balancing work and fun than me. I was always banging my head against the wall.

My old class were sitting on the grass in the shade of the trees. Alma and I joined them. Johann stayed standing, smoking thoughtfully. Above us, the leaves sifted the light. There were patches of sunlight on Alma’s back. I liked what the wind could do to the leaves. But that was really an autumnal picture and the summer was only just starting.

‘Hey, Büchner, what’s that banner?’

It was Max who called out. The smallest boy in my old class. He was a walking cliché. Small. Cheeky. Up for a fight. Did I fit a cliché too? Everyone always thought I was on drugs, just because I had long hair. Or that I was some kind of freak because I liked to wear black. Even I didn’t know why I did it. That was just how things were. Maybe that was the whole point. To make other people see things in me that weren’t there. Disguise and deception.

‘Fundraising for the Baader-Meinhof gang,’ I replied.

Max was fundamentally square. He’d never go to a demo, maybe because his dad owned a block of flats. He always sided with the capitalists in political debates.

‘You’re so funny, Büchner. We’re dying of laughter here.’

‘Don’t ask if you don’t want to know.’

Incomprehensible loudspeaker announcements echoed around the sportsground. Class seven were doing the long jump. A couple of final-years were practising for the high jump. Most people were hanging around on the benches that had been carried out from 26the changing rooms. The teachers were clustered on the stands, in the shade of the loudspeakers. They were almost all smoking. All in all, it was a very sloppy sports day. I was sure I was right. Fritsch was no Nazi. He was useless.

‘Hey, Frieder, what’s with all the coins?’

Alma had been hunting through my PE bag for a lighter and found the ten-pfennig pieces I’d rounded up from all over the flat yesterday. She held up a handful. I just shrugged. I felt awkward. I didn’t want to tell Alma that I … Hmm, was I even in love? Not a clue. How could you fall in love with a person you’d seen for precisely half an hour? But on the other hand … maybe it was destiny or something. Maybe it had to be that way. I sometimes got this feeling that things just turned out right if you let them. If you waited, nothing happened. But if that were the case, I wouldn’t have collected the coins, would I…

‘Tell you later. Is it us now?’

Johann nodded and stubbed his cigarette out in the grass.

‘How you can smoke but still run so fast will forever remain one of the mysteries of the cosmos,’ I said, as Johann took off his shirt and stood there just in his PE shorts; slim, almost skinny. He picked up the furled banner.

‘Morituri te salutant, Alma!’ he declared, striking a comic pose. ‘Will I get expelled if I unroll this thing?’

‘Blame it on Frieder,’ Alma mocked. ‘He’s got nothing to lose.’

‘It’s wonderful to be surrounded by such loving friends,’ I said. That was what I liked about us. Only we could talk this way. It was like all the zeros. Something the others didn’t understand.

The loudspeaker was coughing something about the hundred metres. Johann and I strolled over the lawn to the track. The concrete stands were fuller now. After the athletics, there’d be the traditional football match between the teachers and classes eleven 27and twelve. Everyone would be watching, and nobody would notice us slip out. It was hotter than ever, but Schwarz was standing impassively, surrounded by class five, wearing one of his two suits and writing down their distances for the shot put and ball throwing.

I had genuine respect for Schwarz. Not fear – however bad I was at maths – but respect. Maybe because he didn’t even attempt to be liked. He wasn’t the type to try to win us round with bad jokes. You often didn’t know what he was thinking, but it was obvious that he had thoughts. He only had two suits. Monday to Wednesday, dark blue. Thursday and Friday, dark grey. A thin gold chain in his buttonhole for his round pocket watch, which resided in what was actually the handkerchief pocket. He kept it neither in his waistcoat, nor in his trouser pocket. Not that he ever needed the watch. He arrived punctually at the start of the lesson and stopped ten seconds before the bell. Nobody knew how he did that. He might have sometimes looked up at the town-hall clock, but he could do the same trick even in classrooms where you couldn’t see a clock.

‘Would you explain to me how you arrived at that result, Mr Büchner?’

I’d been standing at the board, trying to solve a problem that we maths idiots had been set as homework to boost our marks. I’d stared at the numbers and the working-out without a clue, stuttered and stammered, just wanting to sit back down.

‘Alma did the calculation for you, didn’t she, Mr Büchner?’

Man! He’d taught Alma and me in class six. I’d never have dreamt that he’d even remember her name, let alone how good she was at maths. All I could do was shrug my shoulders. You couldn’t lie to Schwarz.

28‘Yes, sir,’ I’d said. ‘You know my maths skills.’

‘Thank you for your honesty,’ he’d answered, unmoved. ‘In return, I will give you three times the grade that actually belongs to your sister. Can you work that one out at least? You may sit down now.’ Then he’d explained the working, and suddenly I’d understood the equation.

Three times one was three. That had bumped my overall maths grade up from a six to a five, and meant that I had the chance to try again in the resits. And, consequently, I had the joy of being locked up with my grandfather for six weeks to study Latin and maths. But that part wasn’t Schwarz’s fault.

‘I see we’ve got something to look forward to during the race, Mr Büchner.’ Schwarz nodded almost imperceptibly towards the still-furled banner.

I had to smile as the right answer came to me. ‘I think you might appreciate the message, Mr Schwarz.’

He merely nodded gravely and, without the hint of a smile, bent down to the tape measure and noted another result. Schwarz never smiled. Even so, I was sure he had a sense of humour. I mean, the man was standing on a sportsground in the full July sun wearing his dark suit with a buttoned-up waistcoat, a little gold watchchain in his buttonhole and wearing a hat that was a touch too small. I was sure he knew what he looked like. And that, somewhere deep down inside, it amused him.

‘Büchner! Lohmann!’

Fritsch was bawling. That was us. The other three runners were already in the starting blocks. Johann and I jogged casually over to them. There was Laser, from class eleven. He was faster than me, but that wasn’t what today was all about. Although I might have been able to beat him.

29‘What’s all this? Get rid of that crap!’

Fritsch was pointing at our banner, which we’d laid on the cinder track between our blocks.

‘We’re running a relay race today, Mr Fritsch,’ Johann said politely, sprinting on the spot to warm up. For a moment, Fritsch looked like he wanted to throttle him. He’d been standing out here so long that you couldn’t tell if his red face was from sunburn or rage.

‘We need it for later,’ I reassured him. I didn’t say when later, but he was too busy to pay us much attention.

‘On your marks!’

I got down on my hands, set my feet in the block. I liked this feeling. I liked running. I was fast. There weren’t many things I was much good at, but I could run. Johann and I took a pole each. Fritsch didn’t notice – he only had eyes for his stopwatch.

‘Set!’