The Lost Son

By Ellen Dunne

Tarek, a biographer who doesn't know his own story, gets a call from Helga of the former East Germany. She now lives in Vienna and wants him to write her life story. Finding Tarek has put Helga's life on a new path. Meanwhile, Tarek is lost in his own problems. He is back in Vienna to care for his sick father and see his self-absorbed mother's n

• Language: English
• Publisher: Auguste Crime
• Release date: Jun 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781685770020

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the Lost Son

by Ellen Dunne

translated by Michelle Standley and Cathryn Siegal-Bergman

the Lost Son

Originally published in Germany under the title Für immer mein

by Eire-Verlag, in 2013.

Published in the United States in 2023 by Auguste Crime, an imprint of Clevo Books

530 Euclid Ave #45

Cleveland, Oh 44115

www.clevobooks.com

©2013 Ellen Dunne

English translation copyright ©2023 Clevo Books

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021948799

ISBN: 978-0-9973052-6-5

eBook ISBN: 978-1-68577-002-0

Printed in the USA

Translators: Michelle Standley and Cathryn Siegal-Bergman

Interior and cover design: Ron Kretsch

Second American Edition

Contents

Prologue: The Final Chapter

Chapter 1: The Biographer Without His Own Story

Chapter 2: Mandy And Lina

Chapter 3: New Resolutions

Chapter 4: Home Again

Chapter 5: In The Kleines Café

Chapter 6: A Reunion

Chapter 7: Foundations

Chapter 8: At Second Glance

Chapter 9: Elbow Grease

Chapter 10: Talk Therapy

Chapter 11: Happiness Lost

Chapter 12: Class Reunion

Chapter 13: The Fuse Is Burning

Chapter 14: Bei Mir Bist Du Schön

Chapter 15: It

Chapter 16: 60 Minutes

Chapter 17: Ol’ Karlic

Chapter 18: Fatal Attractions

Chapter 19: A Mother’s Heart

Chapter 20: Too Far

Chapter 21: Pulling Strings

Chapter 22: Afterwards

Chapter 23: Ms. Rottenmeier’s Revenge

Chapter 24: The Last Afternoon

Chapter 25: The Nocturnal Visitor

Chapter 26: Marina’s Night, Part I

Chapter 27: 1992

Chapter 28: Mistakes Big And Small

Chapter 29: Marina’s Night, Part II

Chapter 30: Queen Of The Night

Chapter 31: Bambino

Chapter 32: We Have To Talk

Chapter 33: Dr. Corr’s List

Chapter 34: Peace Of Mind

Chapter 35: The Room

Chapter 36: A Good Boy

Chapter 37: Mom Times Two

Chapter 38: The Last Chapter, Part II

Epilogue: Fuck It

PROLOGUE

THE FINAL CHAPTER

THERE WAS NO DREAMING. NO MEMORY. ONLY darkness behind his eyes.

And suddenly a loud noise from somewhere outside. But he was safely tucked away from whatever it was. His eyelids were heavy, so heavy, as was the rest of his body. His heartbeat held the same steady rhythm of a Roman ship’s slave galley rowing with synchronized strokes.

The noise grew louder. Then LOUDER!

STOP, my ears!

His eyelids seemed to be stitched together, but he separated them forcefully. Opening his eyes, he found himself squinting into a glaring white light. It was better than hearing that noise! He couldn’t predict when he’d hear it again. He had to find the source and try to make it stop, so he could go back to sleep again.

Wait. Where the hell am I?

Objects slowly took shape in front of him. A bunch of iron weights were lying on the floor, some were mounted on a bar. This wasn’t his office, that much was certain. It wasn’t a room he’d ever seen before.

The slaves rowing in his chest fell out of rhythm as adrenaline seeped its way in somehow. It wasn’t enough to coordinate action, but it got him to start thinking more clearly. He closed his eyes again. First, the established facts.

My name is Tarek Waldmann.

Good start! Now to reconstruct the most recent events step by step. A strategy he’d begun to apply as a child, so that he could find his beloved stuffed leather E.T. whenever he misplaced it. He’d have to remember the last thing before everything went dark.

I’m a murder suspect!

More adrenaline seepage. A flood of panic coming in!

Are there maybe more constructive memories?

OK, start from the beginning. What was the last thing he remembered before everything went dark?

I was in Helga’s apartment. She told me she is my real mother. She wanted to tell me everything, to explain the last chapter of my story.

He snorted a bitter laugh. Now that it was way too late, suddenly everyone wanted to tell him everything.

He’d kicked the door to Helga’s kitchen open, feeling his insides were like bubbling, hot lava. Helga, with total calm, closed the door to the little corner stove, turned toward him, wiped her sooty fingers on her navy-blue pants and looked at him. A smile appeared that said, she’d read him.

Then suddenly, he was lying there, an unfathomably deep chasm between himself and Helga, sitting in her kitchen. Could they now bridge that gap? Seems too much like hard work. It would be better to go back to sleep. He squirmed into a more comfortable position but felt his back bump up against a soft barrier.

Someone else was there. That’s when he noticed an arm lay heavy and possessively around his upper body, the hand curled in front of his chest. He took it, chuckling. Lina and her insecure need for physical contact! Her hugs had become something like the Heimlich maneuver. He pulled the hand and arm tighter across his chest, like it was a blanket that had come off. He tried to snuggle closer to the body behind him. No one offered resistance.

Does that really feel like Lina? a voice inside him whispered, "or even like someone living?

He blinked, drew himself up, and studied the hand in his. It had strong, straight fingers with age spots. Clearly not Lina. Without letting the hand go, he looked over his shoulder.

Yes, it was Helga. His mother lay there asleep, her arm twisted strangely in his grasp. It didn’t seem to bother her at all. He pulled it and shook her. But he knew the response that awaited him. Dead people don’t start from their sleep so easily. He’d gained experience with that lately.

Two people dead in two days, Tarek. What will those two friendly Viennese police inspectors say?

Another ringing stabbed his eardrum like a double-edged blade, a doorbell, shrill and demanding. There was knocking and pounding. It rattled a door that was as creaky as it was sturdy. Voices called Tarek’s name, telling him to open the damned door.

Adrenaline started surging through his core. He though he could feel it roaring that it was high time to feel fear. To grasp that no one lived happily ever after in Helga’s story. Especially not the guy who knew too much about her. That he needed to do something, and right damned now!

But he couldn’t. Something had shackled his physical and mental energies together and thrown them into a tank of water, letting them sink. He could only sit there, watching the two of them fight with each other, panic growing, over which of them had gotten them into this mess, while telling him to get them the hell out before it was too late. Was this what an escape artist’s act was like? He raised a corner of his mouth into a resigned smile and patted Helga’s hand.

Mama, he thought hazily, what the hell did we do?

CHAPTER 1

THE BIOGRAPHER WITHOUT HIS OWN STORY

VIENNA, SUNDAY, DECEMBER 27TH

Hermann, I found our boy today! Just like that! As if he’d been waiting for me this whole time! Right there, in front of my nose, and I didn’t notice! I usually always sense something big beforehand when it’s about to happen. Do you remember when my Papa died? He was two hundred kilometers away in great health when we visited him and Mama. And I said to you at breakfast that I had dreamed that we would lose him. And you said, what a bunch of foolishness, didn’t you see how fit he looked on Sunday? That man will outlive us all, you said, and then the phone rang, and it was Mama. Remember that? I have a sixth sense for such things.

But today was the same as every other time, except that it’s snowing again this morning. But that doesn’t count as unusual—it’s winter! It got colder too, but that isn’t unusual either. I had to rub it in the faces of the neighbors in the apartment downstairs, of course, because they were saying just last week that winter was done for this year. It was a non-event, a non-starter—the old man’s favorite word and she just repeats everything he says, as if there had been no women’s lib movement!

But I said, like all crises—when it rains, it pours. I’ve only ever known it to be that way. Bad luck always shows up with a few snotty siblings in tow. I told them that when I ran into them with their fat mutt taking out the trash. We’ll be thinking about this winter, I said, just as much as this financial crisis. The old man just smacked his lips, grinding his jaws as if his dentures might take on a life of their own.

We really have to take Lutzi out now, or she’ll leave a heap in front of our door, he said. Then they steamed off like locomotives, all wider than they were tall—and they even forgot to say, happy holidays!

So that was the highlight of my day. The rest of the day was just like any other since you’ve been gone.

And then, our boy popped up on the laptop screen right in front of me. I knew right away that it could only be him. That freakish fake name, that those other people pushed on him—it can’t be that common in the world, can it? The shock made me quickly shut the laptop, and as I lifted the top again, the screen was still black. I panicked there for a second that he might have disappeared for good. That it was my last chance squandered. Nonsense, of course he wasn’t gone. It was only for that one moment.

I felt better after a few cups of fennel tea and a walk in the park. Then I plowed through the notes from this computer class for geriatric folks. They might as well have been in hieroglyphics, I’m telling you. This young man in the trial class kept throwing around these foreign words, most of them English, naturally. He talked so fast that I just wrote what I could and now it’s all here and helps me zero-point-Josef, as they like to say around here.

I just don’t believe that the last twenty years changed very much. Only the methods used to suppress people and the oppressors themselves. What was once The Communist Party, is now the youth that intimidate us old folks with their technology, secret codes and those arrows that are impossible to control, because they flit around the screen so fast. What was once only in the East before, is now everywhere people call themselves modern. They keep us in check with their computers, just as the Stasi did back then. Despite all that, I managed to write him a letter. Nothing special, just a few lines. It cost me the entire afternoon to think it through, and eleven whole pages of draft notes.

The time it took had more to do with my planning than with my excitement. Because I do have a plan now, ever since I saw…since I really looked at our boy’s Internet site. A biographer, huh? Who ever heard of such a profession? But if I can get up the nerve, I can make something of it. At the moment, I’m still not sure if I really have the heart to go through with it. The stupid thing! My heart has guided me through everything that has needed to be done so far over the years, and in most cases, it’s been right. Go figure! But I still have time to work through everything and time to get my heart in it.

In any case, he called before I even had a chance to wipe the sweat off my forehead. I couldn’t believe it! My first meeting with our boy! I know, I know…a voice over the phone isn’t really meeting, you’d probably say. That’s just a bunch of turbulent air, chopped up in pieces, and forced down a line that gets put back together at the other end. There’s nothing tangible, not even something you can look at. And you’d be right, except maybe for your constant failure to understand just how much of life can be packed into a mere blink of an eye, and how easily an obstacle can turn everything upside down.

So, you’re right. It was just his voice, and only for a couple of minutes. But I don’t think I could have handled more than just his voice right now. At least, not yet. Because I swear to you, our boy sounds just like you. His voice rasps a little when he begins to speak, as if it were an engine that needed to warm up first. It’s as if I could hear you speaking; every time he cleared his throat, just like you always would, my knees simply shook like jelly. But only my knees, the rest of me was frozen still, you know what I mean?

Luckily, our chat didn’t last long, and there weren’t many pauses. Our son does babble on quite a bit though! He lives in Ireland, he told me, as if I hadn’t known for a long time. Maybe that’s why he has a weird accent. His r doesn’t come from his throat, but from somewhere under his tongue. And his e’s sound like there’s a y attached, and a u attached to the o. Still, he’s very well-spoken. He knocked my socks off !

I wonder where it came from. Probably from Uncle Richard? No, not him. He always bored us to death with his poems at every family gathering, old Richard.

It’s probably part of the job that makes our boy so good with words. Of course, it’s easier for him than me. He wasn’t the one who had to pretend like we were just strangers, only meeting to do business together.

But I tell you, he must have sensed something too. Because when I asked him why he writes biographies of all things, for the first time in our chat, the cat bit our boy’s tongue briefly. And you know what he said next?

I have no story, he said, that’s why I write about other people.

How depressing, right?! I almost had to laugh. What a pile of phony crap! I bet he tells everyone that. But I bit my tongue and found an appropriate response. You’d have been proud of me.

Don’t worry, I said, I have enough of a story for both of us. He laughed at that. That was the nicest gift I could get after all the miserable Christmases. I’m sorry to tell you this Hermann, but your gifts were the most miserable. But you had always put so much effort into finding them, I just couldn’t tell you that they were the wrong things. Yeah, yeah, totally against my nature, I know.

Anyway, our son laughed. And I would have loved to tell him he giggled like a girl, but that I didn’t mind, because that laughter alone makes it Christmas for me. He laughed again as we said goodbye, and said he looks forward to meeting me.

So, it’s true. He doesn’t know anything about any of it.

I spent the rest of the night crying my eyes out and exercising, then exercising and crying my eyes out. But now I know that this is the very last time. Because today I found our boy. And starting tomorrow, I’ll make sure he gets back everything those people stole from him – the truth – every single chapter of it!

CHAPTER 2

MANDY AND LINA

FOR AS LONG AS TAREK WALDMANN COULD remember, women only ever rebuked him for two things. The first was for lacking a quality that one would generally call sexual fidelity. The second was his intense and equally inexplicable worship of Barry Manilow.

Four relationships fell victim to the first issue, and to the second, at least one. At least that was what he liked to say in the company of women. Fascinating how a mere mention of Barry’s name every time would display its paradoxical power to attract, as if for the first time.

Here was a, seemingly from the outside, grown up, eloquent and mentally healthy man, who had just declared Mandy his favorite song of all time. That’s right, of all time, whether he had just about two thirds of his life yet to live, or not. Most women hid themselves behind a well- tempered laugh or a change of subject, not wanting to spoil chances at a date with a thoughtless comment, nor did they want to become victims of a bad joke.

Such a disappointment. Tarek found the polarization the best thing about it. Whether open scorn or a descent into fanaticism over the legendary Greek Theater Concert in 1978. Nothing was as sexy to him as emotional extremes. He sought it out.

Then Lina found him.

Should you live to be 150, I’ll be damned if you land a woman with that shitty taste, she blurted out, her Heineken bottle shaking so much from shoving him with her finger that the beer foamed wildly.

Lina’s outfit was feminine and pretty, but thanks to a pair of old- fashioned glasses, cargo pants and a knit vest, she was immune to any masculine interest. She bit her lower lip and shrugged her shoulders apologetically while his best friend Steve laughed so hard his face was red. Tarek just smiled and wondered how Lina managed to stand on those killer spikes with her voice laboring under the pressure of too much alcohol. Two hours later, her legs seemed to wobble underneath her. Nevertheless, she blamed the cobble stones in the Temple Bar, saying they were totally inappropriate for high heels. And so, Tarek and Lina got closer. They were as disheveled from many hours of entertainment as from boredom. Tarek had more experience with nights like these, and therefore simply offered Lina a shoulder to lean on. Until now, she hadn’t known that he never actually meant for the rest of their lives. And thus, after 14 months, 94 euphoric and 27 lukewarm nights of sex, one affair, 8 broken wine glasses and two final break ups, he is still standing in Lina’s kitchen.

He was still looking down at the soulless beauty of the Dublin docklands (clearly the most beautiful thing about this rented shoebox!), letting the cappuccino powder fall out of the pouch into Lina’s mug, while he stirred his brackish tea and thought a little too much yet about the vomitous bile flavor of their first kiss.

Story of our relationship! Half digested, only to come back up.

He had to smile despite the bitter tea on his tongue. Yet another borderline genius sentence. Maybe it was time to start writing again. Something real. He’d recently had a glimpse of inspiration now and again. The last time was just a few days ago even, talking with his client from Vienna. Frau Wolff, whose name fit perfectly with her voice.

I have no story. That’s why I write other people’s stories.

That sounded so damned self-important. But also, incredibly cool. Frau Wolff had seemed impressed. The words just appeared before his eyes in great big, lighted letters and in his own best tradition, he opened his mouth and waffled on, before he might perhaps combust.

He’d have to write that down. Maybe, if he only wrote one-liners long enough, an entire thing might come of it and some pondering would produce a great coherent story with an ending. And if not, maybe he could position himself as a radically experimental artist. London and Berlin were full of such people. He grinned. What stupid bullshit!

With the mugs in his hands, an unopened roll of digestive cookies under his arm, Tarek moved through the cable lined hallway back to Lina’s room. The cold of the laminate floor drove into the soles of his feet like glass chards. Welcome to winter in Ireland.

Lina sat in bed, still half in her blanket cocoon. He put her mug on the night table next to her, let the roll of digestives roll on her lap. No reaction. Lina’s usual mood before 10 in the morning.

The Grand Canal basin is frozen over. She adjusted her big toes, that were pressed against the front windows that reached all the way to the floor, her shovel-like nails painted in turqoise. A halo had condensed on the pane around her warmth.

Tarek laid down on the 30-centimeter edge of the bed that she’d cleared for him and likewise watched the dock two floors below them. Where gulls otherwise bobbed up and down on the water day in and day out, everything was solid now, with dark puddles showing through a blanket of snow. On its edges, the gulls blinking their bafflement toddled back and forth, practically invisible in the white snow, except for their bright colored beaks and flat feet. The sky above their heads and all the other houses, a pure bright blue that made it hard for both to look at the snow without their eyes watering.

It snowed too, Lina said next.

Tarek felt the typical Monday morning gloom of the coming week, as if it were the barrel of a gun, locked and loaded, being held to his temple. Except, today was Saturday.

In slow motion, she chewed her obligatory three cookies, then licking her fingertip, removed every single crumb from the blanket before looking directly at Tarek.

Tarek, honey, you don’t really believe I’m going to drive you to the airport myself, do you? Her Danish accent made her English as flat and plain as the landscape in Esbjerg. In a euphoric fit over the possibility of marriage and family, she took Tarek there with her last November to present him to her mother. Two mistakes: first their meeting, then Jütland in November. His hair had stood on end like mountain peaks all weekend.

He bared his teeth and then stroked the pressure lines the pillow left on her cheek, the only things tarnishing her snow-white skin.

"I only have two bags, min skat. They’ll fit in your fast little car. Besides, the snow will be gone by the afternoon.

He pinched, a little harder, at the pillow crease on her cheek. No hint of a smile.

I don’t offer assistance to deserters.

She used the tone she always did when she came back from the office, which sounded as immature as a contentious subordinate. Her eyes began to glisten, and then overflowed. Without a sound and no additional fuss. She was a good Scandinavian. For the time being.

Hey, hey, what’s this now? He leaned over the heap of blankets toward her and took her by the shoulder, then gently stroked her upper arm.

What are you talking about? I’m staying for a few weeks, that’s it. We had Christmas together, like you wanted. And the New Year. Now it’s time to see my parents. I can already hear how irritated Gero is with me and there’s this incredibly important exhibit of my mother’s, then… Bullshit, she waved it all away with her hand, you packed all your stuff. There’s nothing left here."

You didn’t see my toothbrush?

Tarek, damn it, cut the shit! She jumped up and for the first time, seemed to hate him with all her heart. God knows it wasn’t the first time he’d provoked her. She stood there, in her washed-out company t-shirt with rainbow colors, that somehow managed to distort her nice figure into something unrecognizable, with one fist balled up and the other restingonherhip. Herfightingpose. Good. Anythingwasbetterthanher neediness, big imploring eyes, and vulnerable side. This woman was four years older than Tarek and had multiple achievements in her life. Why the servility?

My toy boy, she’d called him in the beginning. She’d been strong, independent and desirable before her arms slowly turned into tentacles, her lips into suckers, and her hunger for his presence had become totally insatiable.

Listen, don’t jump to the wrong conclusion. Now an apology and they would sink into a sea of self-pity. But these are just the things I kept here. I still have my own apartment.

Her index finger snapped forward, like an arrow with a turquoise tip, direct at his heart.

"Yeah, why is that actually? You’re here all the time anyway, you’ve practically settled down, why don’t you grow a pair of balls and take the next step? Have I ever made any rules or not given you enough freedom? What else do you want?

It always started with this question. Or how it ended, as they saw it.

Outside, a gull had had enough of its feet freezing in the snow and took off, sailing by the glass panes of the new buildings waiting for new renters in vain. It went over to the Grand Canal Theater construction site left quiet on a Sunday, then took itself down to one of the red decorative posts in the square and readjusted its wings.

I want to go to the airport, Tarek told the gull. I want to spend time in Vienna, work on my project while I’m there and see my parents for more than one weekend. Gero has been complaining for a while that I only show up here when there are gifts to pick up or drop off. And there is simply nothing better for me to do. Half of my clients are broke, and the other half aren’t advertising anymore, you know.

There’s your book, she countered. There’s me!

Her eyes were puffy now and her snub nose red. Tarek wanted to say something consoling, but he didn’t have the oxygen for it. He went over to the window and opened it a crack. Ocean, salt, and wind. That was better.

The book is in a difficult phase right now. A change of scenery will do some good. Maybe it will give me the momentum to move forward with it.

She grunted and opened her mouth, then closed it again, out of fear for the destructive power of her honest opinion. So, she went with the more childish variation.

Run away to your tart in Vienna then and write her stupid story.

She is 60, Lina, she’ll hardly be any competition for you. He took off his t-shirt, folded it up and stowed it away in the bag that was still open next to the bed.

Lina found the comment less flattering than he’d thought.

You can’t manage to put a story together yourself. You’ll never finish writing an entire shitty book anyway, because you’d have to stay the course for once in your life and then, you’d have to own up to it. A hundred pages in two years, don’t make me laugh!

A hundred and three, he said, on his way to the bathroom. When he closed the door behind him and locked it, something hard hit it from the other side. Probably one of her high heels. They were pretty dangerous.

You can take a taxi, Mister Waldmann, Lina’s voice sounded closer to the door, along with her forceful steps, then they ebbed away again toward the kitchen. The Author Asylum is closed today!

ISN’T THIS CRAZY? A WHOLE SUMMER WITHOUT any sun in this damned country, and when it does finally pop out, all it can do is blind you. Lina fumbled around the middle console for her