fiction by kathrin schmidt

translation by sue vickerman

On the point of a knife

The weather was the farthest thing from my mind. In that first instant when I stepped out of the house, it was therefore a shock: the sheer violence of the rain’s stabbing rods. My open-toed sandals began squelching after only a few paces, however it was warm, and I wasn’t deterred. Schenke Street with its beautiful old town houses, where I had managed to nab a small apartment for Martin and me two months previously, was a long way from any traffic; there was no chance of getting a soaking from a passing car. Anyway that wouldn’t have deterred me either, since I had just killed my mother. In normal circumstances it’s usual to know precisely where you are. What I knew precisely was that I had rammed a long sharp knife into my mother’s chest. Maybe I was unconsciously aware of the street signs, the letterbox on the corner and the slogan of the primary school that promotes ‘creativity’, because after ten minutes I was exactly where I wanted to be—the Metro-train station. My mother was the only thing I was conscious of. I saw her eyes opening and closing; I saw her mouth opening and closing and the opening and closing of her hands, the latter image inevitably segueing to an image of her chopping up a roast duck’s brown carcass with poultry shears. After all, she had been the Queen of Roast Duck. Also the Roast Beef Queen, Queen of Steak Marinade (cooked Saxony-style), Queen of Blue Carp in White Wine & Vinegar, and the Goulash Queen. As for Thuringian dumplings, Empress thereof, of course. When it came to cooking, my father had held my mother in esteem, but otherwise looked down on her. I never held it against my mother, that my father looked down on her. Since he’d died, some four years ago now, I didn’t even hold anything against my father any more. I fixed a vase on his grave so that my mother and I could take turns to leave flowers. We had never visited the cemetery together.

I got on the train going in the direction of Erkner. My boyfriend’s parents lived there in their own house. My parents had lived in various rented flats. I suppose I was wanting to tell Martin’s mother about how I killed my mother. Things like that, you’ve got to tell someone. I’d rather have had Martin’s mother than mine, but that way, Martin and I would have been siblings  and wouldn’t have been allowed to fall in love. I always got rid of my disappointment by thinking that. When I first told Martin this thought, he came up with the idea of simply swapping our mothers. Virtually, so to speak. He evidently liked the Queen of Roast Duck. If ever there was duck at Christmas in his parental home  it would be black on the outside and still frozen on the inside. We never went to eat at his parents’ house without having had a massive breakfast. Martin wouldn’t be able to have breakfast today when he found my dead mother on the kitchen table where I had just left her with the knife in her chest. It had all happened in peace and quiet. When, at around five-ish, I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water, I found her – as ever – busy-bodying in the fridge. When I furiously demanded to know what she was doing in my fridge, she responded with a serene face, the know-all smile not even faltering when I grabbed and brandished the knife. I yanked her away from the fridge and up against the table, and stabbed.

I’d never felt furious with Martin’s mother. Martin certainly had. That was a further reason why we’d done the virtual swap, some years ago. Martin chose gifts for my mother for birthdays and Christmas. He called her regularly to ask how she was. He visited her far more often than I did and came back replete and contented every time. Last Sunday, however, he had brought her back with him, and was of the opinion that she should stay at our place for at least a little while; she wasn’t doing so well; she was hardly even cooking anymore. Who knows how long till she’d be joining my father in his grave? I should give my heart a prod and learn to put up with her; after all, he put up with his mother. Obviously, in view of her state, I had no right to refuse to let her stay. Carrying on as if she wasn’t there was impossible because I was at home myself, having once again lost my admin job. When I came into the kitchen and felt her eyes trained on me, I sometimes felt myself starting to shrivel. So I’d always leave the room at speed, mostly just grabbing myself a plain roll or an apple. I hated turning into a child under her gaze. At first I thought that by leaving the house I’d be able to put her out of my mind for a while. But right from moving in, she took me over. No matter how far I went from home, she didn’t let go.

What did she ever actually do to me? The more I thought about it, the less I knew. Even then, on the train to Erkner, I was trying to remember. My earliest memories seemed to date back to around my fourth birthday. My mother was wearing a dress with green stripes which one year and one child later she could no longer wear. A full skirt swung in tiers from her narrow waist. My mother and I were running – no, bouncing – along, side by side, our arms crossed over our fronts to have hold of both of each other’s hands. We were singing. I couldn’t bring to mind what song it was, but at the end of each verse we would turn without letting go hands and bounce back again, my mother’s breasts and the long loops of my Bavarian-style plaits bouncing too. I remembered how lovely it had been to bounce to and fro holding Mother’s hands without any foresight of the fun coming to an end. Just like I’d had no foresight of Mother’s end. Leastways, not how it was going to happen. My characteristic lack of foresight had evidently not changed much... But the images of bouncing were layered on top of other memories. Events that had occurred later were surfacing through the murk, but before I could extract and examine them, we’d bounced across them, over and over till they vanished. We’d been a dynamic duo. I was starting to get upset. Why I was suddenly feeling guilty for leaving Martin alone with her, I’ve no idea. The alarm would go off in a few minutes. Martin probably wouldn’t go into the kitchen straight off, but would take a shower in the bathroom, and get his clothes from the wardrobe in the bedroom. But then he’d find her and, no doubt in shock, would want to get her off the table. I pictured him pulling the knife out of the wood and propping my mother up against the fridge again. He might for instance use his fingernail to smooth the cut on her chest back down flat. Plus he’d be wondering where I was. Where was I? That was probably the moment when I fully realized what I’d done. I whipped out my phone and called him.

Kathrin Schmidt, multi-award-winning poet and novelist, was born in the former German Democratic Republic, her voice distinctly of the east. Her German Book Prize-winning novel ‘You’re not dying’ was translated by Christina Les (Naked Eye Publishing 2021). Schmidt’s forthcoming story collection ‘It’s over. Don’t go there.’ is translated by Sue Vickerman (Naked Eye Publishing 2021).

Sue Vickerman’s latest translated work is TWENTY POEMS BY KATHRIN SCHMIDT, Arc Publications, 2020. She has five poetry and four fiction publications in print and edits for Naked Eye Publishing (UK). Website: suevickerman.eu