Bina Writes an Essay

This is another chapter from my unpublished novel "The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Present Fund".
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Saturday 19^th June 2004

Bina comes into my bedroom without knocking and stands at the foot of the bed.

“Mama.”

It can only be about money or similar. My clock says 10:31. It is Saturday morning.

“Yes.”

“You said you would put the Internet on the other computer. For me to work.”

So I did. Last night. I forgot.

“OK.”

She leaves. I drag myself out of bed. This is a good reason to get up. It is one of Life’s Important Reasons. My daughter needs to write an essay for school, she has to research in the Internet. It is a reason to live.

My pyjamas smell of sweat, I hate it because I never sweat. But six weeks ago I had a hormone coil inserted, something to stop the awful bleeding. The doctor suggested this alternative method to having a hysterectomy. And since then I sweat every night, towels full, and everything is drenched and I hate it. I hate waking up in the morning and smelling it. I wish all of this, all this sadness and all this pain would go away. It is a reason not to get up in the morning.

I slip into my Ritz slippers, a remnant from the times when we were so rich that we would go spontaneously to Paris and stay in the Ritz. Well actually that only happened once. I walk 48 steps down to my office, down to the basement and kneel down under the desks to examine the cables leading to the two computers. This is not good for me at this time of the morning. I have not even had a cup of tea. This is highly complicated and strenuous IT work at 10:31, probably 10:35 now, on the floor, with no tea fix. I locate a cable and remove it from my computer and attach it to Bina’s.

No lights light up. If I had relocated the Internet a light would light up.

Ah. This is because a second cable needs to be relocated. There it is. That one. What I don’t understand is we have a router. All our computers are attached to this router and Wills’ computer has Internet round the clock. Theoretically, all three computers could be in the Internet at the same time. Every time I ask Wills why we can’t do this, he doesn’t have the time to explain it or there is some other problem. So it is easier to just relocate the Internet and not have the Internet for a day, so that Bina can have it, than fill my head with complicated questions and answers.

A light lights up. It is green and that is good, green means the Internet. I test the Internet on Bina’s computer. There it is! I am a genius and have provided my children with their needs.

I knock on Bina’s door.

“It works.”

“Thanks.”

I would like to go back to bed, but there are about 500 birds in my garden and the surrounds and they are intent on getting me out of bed. They start around five o’clock in the morning. I think I have a whole family of doves or something nesting under my gable. Some of them fly at my window sometimes. In the meantime I seem to be able to identify each of them, there is the bird that goes “Cuck-coo-coo, cuck-cuck-coo-coo, cuck,” all day, maybe it is a cuckoo even, then there is the one that sings the first few notes of the Austin Powers theme. There are squawkers and trillers and ones that just want to bother you. And the strangest ones appear in my garden, seriously, even woodpeckers.

I get out of bed and have another shower. I already had one shower at about seven o'clock. I get dressed. I make myself a cup of tea and brush my teeth. It is time to Start The Day. I don’t know how I’m going to do this and I don’t know what will be the middle of the day, but towards the end of the day (because it is Saturday) I will do the weekly shop, the only time I am allowed to spend any money, and at the end of the day (although I don’t want it now) I know I will be drinking some beer and smoking some cigarettes and during the night I will have asthma problems and I will be terribly frightened.

And at about five o’clock The Birds will wake me up, and I will listen to their chorus and I will welcome them, because they know me and I know them, and I will wait for the Austin Powers bird and the bird with the coo-cuck problem in his throat, and the family of doves, because they are my only constant, and I will say good morning, good morning, it’s me Lizzie, and I will be so frightened, but I know that I will get through this day like every other day so far until one day there is no more fear and the birds will coo over my ashes because I told Wills I don’t want to be buried in a coffin, I am too frightened that I will not be dead and that I will suddenly wake up in a coffin and try to get out and I can’t so he must see that I get burned and scatter my ashes in the garden so that I can be with my plants and my trees and hear my birds.

He said he would make sure I was.

I am dressed now, I have on the same jeans as yesterday but I put on a different sweater because the one from yesterday smelled of smoke. I hate that.

I weigh a kilo more than yesterday which is odd because I hardly eat anything any more but I geuss all the beer is not helping.

I trip down to the basement to see how Bina is getting on.

“If the police come,” Bina says. “Don’t be surprised if the police come, because I have about five Internet sites up with Nazis and Hitler, I have to write an essay on Hitler for school.” She giggles.

“I studied all that history at university,” I say. “Why don’t you ask me?”

“What? I have to write this myself. And about someone called Göppes. By Tuesday.”

“Göppes? I don’t know Göppes, who’s he? Do you mean Göbbels?”

“No Göppes. I don’t know either. Someone in the Third Reich. It’s OK. I found all these Internet sites.”

I potter around and look at the house which is now a lot dustier than it was about five weeks ago, which was the last time I cleaned it. No point in starting to clean it again. So I dispatch to the garden. The garden is perfect, which it should be as my gardener came last week. Since the gardener has been coming, for nearly three years now, we have trees and bushes and everything grows so much that you can watch it. You really can watch a rose bush grow. I swear, yesterday I was looking at my rose bush and it was just a bit shorter than me. Today it is my height. It is like Jack and the Beanstalk.

My gardener said to me last week, “Frau Kortmann, this bush will grow about two metres fifty high and wide… wide… you’re going to have an enormous bouquet of roses.”

I like that.

It doesn’t stop raining here. What is it with this weather.

I drive out to the cheap supermarket. It is about three kilometres away but it is really cheap. I can buy everything for almost half of what I pay in town. Usually Wills helps me with the shopping but he’s gone out with his friend and usually Bina helps me unpack but she can’t today because she has to write about Hitler and Göppes (I really think she means Göbbels but I can’t interfere).

This is my big day. This is the only day I can spend money. It’s exciting. I have been unemployed for two and a half months and our bank account is locked. I managed to draw out some money before the lock and I am trying to make it last. I finally got a new project which will be very well paid but it doesn’t start for another four weeks, and there is still the risk that it will be cancelled. And I was very lucky, sitting day and night in front of the Internet I was able to get two small orders in the last few weeks, they only paid about 1400 Euros, but 1400 Euros is so much more than zero Euros.

I only allow myself to spend 60 Euros in the supermarket, I have to buy enough food for a family of three for a week, and it is a challenge. It’s the most intellectual challenge of the week. I only buy no-name products, I try to be imaginative. It is the best pat on the back of the week when the lady at the till tells me that I only need to pay 60 odd Euros. I’ve done it again! I’m a genius and the best mother.

I drag four shopping bags up to the kitchen and unpack them into the fridge and into the cupboards. I make myself a cup of no-name Nescafé and start to drink it. I transport three crates of drinks down to the cellar. I take this opportunity to look in on Bina.

“Hi, what’s going on?”

It’s six o’clock. She must have been working for seven and a half hours. Still no Internet for me.

“It’s shit. I’m only up to 1919.”

I look down, as if I’m thinking really hard.

“Hey, who was that guy, you might know who I mean, he was born on April 20^th, 1889, in Branau-am-Inn in Austria?”

“Where?”

“Braunau-am-Inn.”

She smiles. “Yeah, very good, very good. And when did he die?”

“Um… ah you got me there… well, 1945, 1945. Don’t know the exact date, hang on, April, April. He’d just had his birthday… so… um… April sometime.”

“April 30^th.”

“Yeah, right! He’d just had his birthday, I know he’d just had a party… then he shot himself in the bunker.”

“That must’ve been painful.”

Yeah, funny, Bina.

“He was a corporal, you know. In the First World War. He got the Iron Cross.”

“He got two Iron Crosses.”

“Huh? I only know about one Iron Cross.”

“He got two. One in the First World War, one in the Second. See?!”

“I thought you were only up to 1919.”

“You don’t know everything.”

“I do. He was this Corporal, in the First World War. He did… brave things. He got it for bravery. He was on the front line, running messages, communications, you know, like from one post to the other… that’s why he got the Iron Cross. For bravery.”

“Whatever.”

“Why don’t you let me write this thing? I could write it in English, then you just have to translate it into German. You could save yourself a whole lot of hassle.”

And I could have the Internet back.

“Yeah right.”

“Then he went to prison. That’s where he wrote his book, Mein Kampf. You know, everyone bought the book. But it was so boring that noone read it. You know, in that book, he said everything he was going to do, told everyone about the Final Solution, with the Jews. Said everything. But noone knew about it.”

“But everyone bought the book.”

“Yeah, but noone read it. Because it was so boring. So noone knew it.”

“Whatever. How comes you know so much?”

“I studied it. At university, I studied Third Reich.”

Shrug.

“Hang on.”

In the living-room I find a handy university book on Nazi Germany which I transport to the basement.

“Look,” I say, opening a page at random and finding a photocopy of Hitler’s membership card to the Nazi party. “This is his membership card to the Deutsche Arbeiter Partei. That was the original Nazi party.”

“Yeah, and? So what about it?”

“See, it says here he was the 5^th member of the Deutsche Arbeiter Partei. So that means he was the 5^th member of the Nazi party.”

“That’s crap. The Internet says he was the 55^th member.”

“No look. That’s not right. It says here he was the 5^th member.”

She casts a cursory glance over the book. “What is that?”

“It’s a photocopy of his membership card! It says he was the 5^th member of the Nazi party.”

“Look, I’ve read in the Internet 50 times that he was the 55^th member.”

“You don’t want my help? Look here, look, says it here.”

“I’m so fed up. I’ve got so many sites up and each one tells me something different.”

Oh God. “Bina, please let me help you with this.”

“No.”

So no Internet for me this evening then. How else will I be able to entertain myself?

“You find anything on that Göppes guy?”

“No. I’m still on Hitler.”

“I think you mean Göbbels, Bina. I think you really mean Göbbels.”

“I mean Göppes, OK? I know what I’m writing about, OK?”

What is her problem?

I venture another excursion into the garden. I am hoping that every time I look another leaf has grown. I hear the coo-cuck bird and the Austin Powers bird. They must be living close by. I cannot establish that another leaf has grown, but I touch each plant, bush and tree all the same. I convince myself that this will intice them to grow. Sometimes I say, Hi, or Hello. I wonder how long it will be before the neighbours start to worry about me. I have actually been known to come out here in my pyjamas holding a cup of tea.

I cannot lock myself up in my basement and drink beer and smoke cigarettes and surf around on the Internet so I retire to my bedroom to do same, except for the Internet bit. This is extremely unpleasant as I never smoke in my bedroom and I don’t want empty beer bottles in there either. I also take my phone with me, which is fairly pointless as I have almost no reception for my phone in my bedroom, the connection being located in the basement, 48 steps away.

I am smoking a cigarette and taking a swig of a beer when the door opens and Bina storms in.

“This guy won’t die! He just won’t die!”

“I’m so sorry Bina. We’re talking about Hitler, right?”

“I’m only up to 1923! When is it going to progress! He’s not even in power!”

“Well only another 10 years then hon. How long do you need the Internet?”

“Until midnight. I still have to find this Göppes guy.”

It’s Göbbels.

Good luck to her.

I walk into my basement and find Bina’s presentation on the Third Reich for school. It looks pretty impressive. Except for one page with the heading “Josef Göppes” and a picture of Göbbels. I cannot allow this to stand.

I sit myself down at her PC and research through the Internet until I find the same picture of Göbbels. I download it and store it in a Word file and add the heading “Josef Göbbels”. I print it out.

I place the printout in a plastic envelope and lay it down outside Bina’s door. Then I go to bed. It is two o’clock in the morning. I hope noone will disturb me until at least eleven o’clock.