Arnon Grunberg
BIRTHMARKS
Kadoke wants to ring the doorbell, but the grass makes him hesitate. He picks up the hose and starts watering the front garden, the trees, the plants, the lawn. The son, who, as was expected of him, became a psychiatrist, is looking after the garden. Every once in a while he played badminton here with his father. Those days are gone; now the grass is mainly looked at, like an old familiar painting, still beautiful. It has not rained for almost ten days; yellow patches have started to form on the grass. For years it had been well maintained, this garden, a labour of love, or at least of a perseverance and a sense of responsibility indistinguishable from love. Perseverance is love too — the refusal to give up, the reluctance to lose, to die; all are forms of love. How very tragic that a short period of drought can wreak such havoc.
It is early morning, but already warm. A neighbour is staring at him, but Kadoke pretends not to see her. There is nothing remarkable about this scene: the son watering the withered garden, the son who cares for this, that and the other, the son who lives so others do not have to die.
But it is not possible for him to care for everything, or rather: his care does not always have the desired effect. That is the problem. He has given the girls instructions, some he has written in English and stuck on a kitchen cupboard and while watering the grass, he begins to wonder why his simple instructions have not been followed.
‘Please, water the garden when the lawn is dry’; surely is not that hard to understand. The young women looking after his mother can easily water the garden in between caring for her. No need to keep such a close watch on mother that there is no time left for the grass.
Kadoke knows who he is: Otto Kadoke, calm, dedicated but not overly empathic, that is no good for the calmness, no good for the treatment, the doctor should not come too close. The emphasis is on the third syllable, it is Kadoké, but when people mispronounce his name, he does not correct them. What is a name? At most a history one has to relate to. They can call him ‘doctor’ as well. He signs official papers with O. Kadoke.
He is named after Otto Frank, a friend of the family, although it seems his mother never liked the famous Otto much.
He had resented his first name when he was still a child, as if his parents had intended to pull a trick on him. Almost everyone comes to terms with his name, but he did not, and at some point during primary school he started calling himself Oscar. To friends he is Oscar, to patients doctor Kadoke. He is a man with no first name. His wife only called him Otto when they were fighting. The last one and a half year of their marriage, she almost exclusively addressed him by Otto. Once, at dinner with a couple they were friendly with, a dermatologist and his wife, she said: ‘Do you actually dare to say you love me? Can you bring yourself to say it at all?’ He had said nothing, painfully aware of his silence, but unable to break it. With the end of his marriage, the quiet and the melancholy came back into his life. Nothing is more familiar, little is dearer to him. The divorce was painless, he remained childless, his ex is now pregnant by his successor, his colleagues like him and he thinks he knows why: he does his job without expecting any other recompense than his salary. He does not need to hear how good he is, how important, he knows that what he does is in fact hopeless — the hopeless case he often encounters, comes with hopeless work — but he has reconciled himself to the situation. Human dignity lies in the persistence the hopeless work is performed with.
Ten to fifteen times a day he allows himself the pleasures of a cigarette, sometimes more often. He smokes the way he tries to help his patients, with all his might. He does not smoke because the faith in recovery has deserted him, that would be too nice, he started smoking, he went on, could not stop and gradually, as he was smoking, so to speak, the hope of recovery deserted him. Recovery itself slipped away from him like a lover, but the loss had nothing to do with the smoking. He does not smoke because he has lost something. Kadoke has not lost more than any other person. Loss ought not to be cultivated.
A broken bone can be healed, leukaemia can sometimes be cured, but anyone in Kadoke’s field knows the prospect: stabilization. Often that is all there is. Sometimes even stabilization fails.
He turns off the tap, but keeps holding the hose as he rings the doorbell. He does not have a key, the neighbour does. He does not want to have a key, Kadoke wants to ring the doorbell, he does not want to appropriate a permanent place in the house he has left with difficulty.
Rose opens the door dressed in shorts and a t-shirt. She wears yellow flip-flops. She is one of the two girls who look after his mother, and she does so with love and surrender. She is from Nepal, came to the Netherlands to work as an au pair and has never returned. She had no future in Nepal. Who does? With mother and Kadoke she found work and a roof above her head. She was no longer an au pair, reinvented herself as geriatric attendant, although of course those occupations show similarities. She was training to be a nurse in Nepal, but the West called, or perhaps it should be put differently. Poverty called: ‘Go away.’
There are misunderstandings from time to time, inevitable cultural differences, tiny, but not tiny enough not to be called a difference anymore. And Kadoke’s mother is not always easy, suspicion playing tricks on her, envy taking hold. Kadoke thinks of Rose as an angel in human form.
‘Hi,’ she says. ‘Mother is still upstairs. Hot, isn’t it? I like the heat. It reminds me of home.’
He puts down the hose, enters the house. Rose leads the way to the kitchen.
‘Tea?’ she asks.
‘Just water, thanks. How is everything? How is mother?’
She pours him a glass of water. ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Eating is still difficult. One day better, next day not so good.’
He drinks the water, gives Rose a nod. Kadoke wants to encourage her to speak on but he also wants to show his support in her fight to improve mother’s food intake.
‘Sometimes I’m really worried,’ Rose says, leaning against the kitchen counter.
‘I know. But you can always call me. If there’s something, call me. You are such a good caregiver, Rose. We are so lucky to have you here.’
And she answers: ‘You are such a good son.’
They like giving each other compliments, the psychiatrist and the geriatric attendant. Kadoke acts out of genuine affection for Rose and because he thinks the person looking after his mother day and night should not only be given money. Every once in a while, Rose needs some emotional attention too.
At times he is overwhelmed by the thought of loving Rose. He is the first to admit not knowing if he really loves her for who she is, Rose herself, or rather for what she represents: the girl looking after his mother, the girl keeping his mother alive.
‘I’m going to mother’s room,’ he says.
He goes up the stairs, passes the room which was, and has remained, his. His parents left everything as it was, as if they thought time travel were possible and the grown-up Kadoke would suddenly reappear as an eleven-year-old, feeling the desperate need to play with his LEGO. Or was it for the grandchild that did not come? Now the girls sleep there.
The son knocks on the door of his mother’s bedroom. ‘Yes.’ It is a feeble yes, a plaintive yes. Mother is still in bed. She looks at him and smiles, a reflex, just like a baby smiles when it sees its mother. A smile without self-awareness.
He walks over to her bed, gently stroking her head, first her left cheek, then her forehead.
‘How did you sleep?’ ‘All right. And you?’ ‘Good. Does the heat bother you?’ ‘The heat never bothers me. I love the heat, it is the cold I cannot stand. But you look pale. In the midst of summer you look pale.’
Mother livens up. As long as she worries about her son, there is life in her yet.
The psychiatrist takes her hand. ‘Rose is a little nervous. Because of the food. You eat very little, she says. You do not eat as well as you should. She is worried.’
‘I am not a goose that needs to be stuffed, am I? Let her worry about herself.’
‘You are not, mother, far from it, but you have to stay above a certain weight, there is a critical point we should not reach.’
‘Says who?’
‘Says the doctor.’ ‘You are my doctor, right?’ ‘And it is me saying it.’ She looks at him, despair in her eyes. ‘I do my best, but I am not a goose, son, that needs to be fattened before Christmas.’
It is hot in the bedroom. He does not understand why mother would lie underneath a down and feather duvet with temperatures like these, but he remembers she always took a hot-water bottle to bed from late September till mid May. Wherever the bottle was, she was. He is sweating, he feels the dripping underneath his armpits in his shirt.
‘I have to go to work in a minute,’ Kadoke says. ‘You should allow yourself some rest, son.’
‘I do allow myself rest.’ He kisses his mother three times. wants to go, but holds her hand just a little longer. Because he never knows what state she will be in when he next sees her, he prolongs his farewell, like a spell. In the hallway, he takes off his jacket and shirt. The shirt is soaked at the armpits. This does not work, he cannot show up at a patient’s like this, sweaty, perhaps smelly. He has to put on a new shirt. There are some old ones here. Kadoke realizes they are in his nursery and he cannot go in there, it is where the girls sleep. Rose on weekdays, June at the weekend. It would be rude and show a disrespect of their privacy to just walk into that room. First ask, then enter. That is the correct order. He hesitates for a few seconds, but then decides that a grown-up man in his mother’s house is allowed to walk around stripped to the waist, even in the presence of the geriatric attendant. He goes downstairs.
In the kitchen Rose is preparing mother’s breakfast.
‘Rose, do you happen to know if there are still some clothes of mine in my room? Can I go in and have a look?’
‘Of course, it’s your room. It’s your house. You can go wherever you want.’
He shakes his head. ‘No Rose, it’s mother’s house. It’s your house. I’m just a guest.’
He sees the tenderness in her eyes. They have known each other for such a long time and they have mother in common. A strange intimacy has grown between Rose and Kadoke, a melancholy blend of ease and unease, of tension and care, of money and gratefulness, of love, slowly awakening, and death, approaching equally slowly.
He turns around, walks out off the kitchen, but Rose says: ‘What’s that? On your back?’
He stands still, tries to look over his shoulders at his back.
‘There,’ she says. She comes closer, carefully touches the back right above his buttocks with an index finger.
‘Those things are growing,’ she says. ‘I have seen them before, but they are growing. You should go to a doctor. I know somebody who died because of these things. You have to be careful.’
He feels his back. The moles have always been there, but they seem to have grown a little.
The psychiatrist walks to the mirror in the hall, glances. Yes, they have grown indeed.
‘You should do something. I don’t want you to die,’ she calls.
He laughs. Rose is a good nurse, but sometimes she is too frightened, too worried. She sees death at places where it is out of the question. It might be due to her culture that she believes she discerns death at places where the Westerner does not wish to see anything and where, in fact, nothing is to be seen.
‘I’m not going to die, Rose, but I’ll call my dermatologist. If you insist. I cannot say no to you, you know that.’ He briefly touches her left shoulder, like a reflex, to show he appreciates her concern.
Kadoke walks upstairs, for the first time in years he enters his old bedroom. He tries not to look at Rose’s stuff. Because she does not live here from Thursday till Sunday, it has never really become her room. It is a hotel room at best, a temporary place of residence. Her belongings are in a bag, a few clothes are hanging over a fold-up chair his mother once found in a heap of rubbish.
He opens a closet. There is crockery in there. He has no idea why. In a second closet he finds some old clothes and indeed some shirts, neatly ironed and folded by his mother no doubt. He picks three. The first two seem discoloured. The third, a white one, is okay. He holds up the shirt. Kadoke does nothing to keep fit, but he does not put on weight. He loses weight by smoking. Mother loses weight by not eating. But he can still take it; she cannot.
Buttoning up his shirt, he walks down the stairs, his jacket over his arm.
‘Coffee?’ Rose asks. ‘Do you want some coffee? Or more water?’
‘No, thanks. I have to go.’
He looks at the fruit she has prepared for mother. Slices of apple, segments of orange.
‘Are you going to call the doctor?’ Rose asks. ‘For mother?’ ‘For you! For your back.’ ‘I will call my dermatologist, but it’s nothing serious. A mole, a few moles. Birthmarks. Don’t get upset, Rose. I don’t need care. I’m fine, I’m okay. It’s mother who needs your care.’
‘They are growing. I’m not blind.’ She looks very serious.
He hesitates, then takes a step towards her and gives her a hug to emphasize that she need not worry, that he understands her, her uncertainty, her panic, her existential fear that he will no longer be there and she will be left behind with mother. This is why he takes her in his arms, pulls her close for a second. ‘Take good care of yourself,’ he says. ‘I’ll try to come by tonight, after work.’
They are tied together because of mother, they seem inseparable, if only because he cannot imagine Rose will not look after mother one day. Without Rose and June he can no longer picture his mother alive. Kadoke looks at his phone, he should be going, but quickly runs upstairs instead.
Mother is lying in bed, her eyes closed.
‘I’m going,’ he says softly and he puts his left hand under his mother’s head. ‘Eat the fruit Rose will bring you in a minute, eat it all, it is important. Do it for me.’
She looks at him angrily. ‘Who else would I do it for?’
Four more kisses he gives his mother, then he runs downstairs. ‘Bye Rose,’ he calls. ‘See you tonight.’
In his car he quickly lights a cigarette, then strikes his lower back with his right hand. Yes, they are growing. He will follow the advice Rose gave him.
This is the first chapter of Arnon Grunberg’s novel BIRTHMARKS. For more information about Arnon Grunberg and (reviews of) BIRTHMARKS, please visit the Lebowski Agency website or arnongrunberg.com.
