Free Stella by Siegfried Lenz Page B

days, and my mother didn’t seem to have noticed it, or at least she didn’t examine it for any length of time or ask questions. She did once turn it toward the light, however, and looked at it inquiringly—that was the day when I was making my way through one of Orwell’s essays. She was about to put it down again when something about it suddenly struck her. She sat down by my window, brought the photograph close to her eyes, and looked at me and then back at the photo. The way her gaze switched from it to me and back again, I could tell she was trying to find something out that she didn’t yet know. A clouded expression appeared on her face; she was obviously registering the fact that she no longer knew everything about me—as she always used to—and in a certain sense she had lost me. She always wanted to know everything, no doubt because when I was a little boy she had wanted to spare me disappointments and pain and mistakes. She spent ages looking at the photo insilence; I couldn’t suppose that it gave away anything much, and was about to say something, when she finally commented, in her usual thoughtful way, “She looks older than you, Christian. The woman in the photo beside you, I mean.”
    “She’s my English teacher,” I said. “We met by chance on the beach.”
    “Pretty woman,” said my mother, adding, “Does she have any children?”
    “As far as I know she’s not married.”
    “A very pretty woman,” my mother repeated.
    After that observation, I ventured to suggest, “If you don’t mind, I’ll bring her home for coffee some day.”
    “Your teacher?” asked my mother, surprised.
    “Why not?” I said. “I’m sure she’ll come if I invite her, she’s very nice.”
    “I can see she is,” said my mother. “And you like each other. I can see that too.” Without another word, she put the photo back in its place, caressed my hair, and left me alone.
    How she knew more than she was letting on was her own secret. Or if she didn’t know, she guessed, she sensed it. They were talking about me in bed, and Icould hear them through the door, which happened to be not quite shut. They had come home late.
    My father hadn’t noticed the photo yet, and at first it didn’t seem to surprise him that I had a picture of Stella and myself on my desk. “Oh, come on, Jutta,” he said, “these things happen all the time. Every boy wants to admire someone, and it’s all the more likely if this teacher is pretty.”
    “If only it were just admiration,” said my mother. “I’ve nothing against admiration, but it’s more than that with Christian, believe me, it’s more than that.”
    “What makes you so sure?”
    “The way they’re sitting happily on the beach, hand in hand, he’s hand in hand with his teacher, and the way they’re looking at each other. You’d think they’d just been waiting for one another.”
    “Maybe Christian took a bit of a fancy to her, that’ll be all. I know his teacher; she’s very good-looking.”
    “In that picture you’d think they were about to fall into each other’s arms any moment. I really do think you should take this seriously.”
    “Christian is eighteen, Jutta.”
    “Yes, well,” said my mother, “and this teacher is considerably older.”
    “So? A difference in age is sometimes an advantage.”
    I couldn’t help smiling to myself when, after a pause, he said in a different and amused voice, “We both discussed that once ourselves, a long time ago.”
    Even after this reference to some shared experience of theirs, my mother’s mind didn’t seem to have been set at rest. She mentioned Christine, my friend at school, who had called several times to invite me to a barbecue and always went away disappointed. My father took his time before replying. “Sometimes you just don’t know what hit you, you’re defenseless.” I instinctively sat up in bed—I’d never heard my father talk like that before. I was thinking of opening the door a