The Field - Softcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

ROBERT SEETHALER was born in Austria and now divides his time between Vienna and Berlin. He is the author of four novels, including The Tobacconist, which has sold more than one million copies in Germany, and A Whole Life, a finalist for the International Booker Prize. He also works as a screenwriter and an actor, most recently in Paolo Sorrentino's Youth.

CHARLOTTE COLLINS studied English at Cambridge University. She worked as an actor and radio journalist in both Germany and the U.K. before becoming a literary translator. She received the Goethe-Institut's Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize for Robert Seethaler's A Whole Life, which was also a finalist for the International Booker Prize and the International DUBLIN Literary Award. She co-translated the The Eighth Life, the acclaimed novel by Nino Haratischvili, and her other translations include Seethaler's The Tobacconist and The End of Loneliness by Benedict Wells.

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Navid al-Bakri [CH Head]

Seven years before my death, I took my parents’ ashes home. The Holy Book forbids cremation, but no one was very interested, and in any case, such prohibitions had lost their significance for my father. He didn’t believe in Hell any more, only earthly existence, and his just happened to reach its end in Paulstadt. Before they were laid to rest, I removed a little scoop of ash from each urn so I could smuggle them out of the country in two small linen pouches, disguised as powdered spices.

I took the bus from the airport. The driver smiled at me in the rear-view mirror.

Are you from here? he asked.

I don’t know, I said.

Mashallah, my friend.

Mashallah.

I got out at the village square. The brightness hurt my eyes. The bus shelter, behind which I used to play with stone marbles, had disappeared. Everything looked different. Only the great cypress was still there. My father often talked about it. It was so old that the prophets had rested in its shade before setting off into the world. Its roots went so deep that the furthest tips were scorched by the heat of the Earth’s core. That’s why sometimes, at night, you can see its cones glowing in the moonlight.

I walked through the village streets, inhaling the smell of the old walls. I was hot in my shirt and dark trousers. The sweat ran down my face. There weren’t many people about. A few children. A small group of elderly women, all in black.

Some men were sitting outside a cafe, drinking tea. I remembered the entrance, with its carved ornamentation. I’d forgotten how tiny a tea glass can look in a man’s hand. I walked on. Here and there I recognized a house, a fragment of wall, full of holes, the barber’s shop, the square with the acacias, the cracked concrete pipes for the well that was never dug.

The road forked, and I bore left onto Three Widows Street. I didn’t recognize anything any more. The road was freshly tarred, but the tar had split in the heat and its black wounds were bulging open. My parents’ house had vanished. Three cars were parked on the empty plot, which was littered with stones. The back of the parking lot was marked by a low, half-derelict wall. I couldn’t tell if it was our garden wall or the remains of the bedroom. I sat down on a section of it. The sun was high; everything was drenched in its blinding white light. I couldn’t remember what I had intended to do. I think I had wanted to scatter my parents’ ashes over the grass in their garden. I’d thought someone was sure to be living in the house, so I would have to be quick, a swift movement of my hand in the wind. But there was no wind, no garden and no house. There was just a parking lot and the heat.

Hard to say how long I sat there. Eventually I got up, took the two little pouches out of the pocket of my shirt and scattered the ashes on the stony surface. They left no trace, seeming simply to dissolve into the hot ground. I believe I wept, but I’m not sure. Later, a man appeared. He nodded at me, got into one of the cars and drove off. I stood and listened to the sound of the engine until I couldn’t hear it anymore. My forehead was burning, and there was a rushing in my ears. I longed for shade and quiet. I think I longed for home.