Free The Taste of Apple Seeds by Katharina Hagena

up. With each jump she would make a half-turn and sweep forward or backward across the shining surface. Or she would spin around on one leg, her gloved hands thrust up to the winter sky, sprinkling her pigtails with ice. In the beginning, Hinnerk wondered whether he could actually tolerate this kind of ice-skating. People would stare, for it was certainly eye-catching. But then he thought he could detect envy in people’s whispers, and so he decided to enjoy his daughter and her strange behavior on the ice. Especially as otherwise she was very polite, gentle, and motherly, always keen to make life pleasant for Hinnerk, her beloved father.
    She met my father on the frozen Lahn. Both were studying in Marburg: Christa sport and history, my father physics. Of course, there was no way my father could fail to notice my mother on the ice. Small groups of people gathered to watch from the bridges above the river, people who couldn’t fail to notice her either. They looked down at the tall figure, which wasn’t immediately identifiable as male or female. The legs in the narrow brown trousers were a boy’s, as were the shoulders and the large hands in felted mittens, and the short brown hair swept under a bobble hat—Christa had cut off her pigtails before the first lecture. Only the hips were perhaps a touch too broad for a man, the red cheeks too smooth, and the outline of her face, from her earlobe to her lower jaw and then down her neck, ran in such a delicate arc that my father wondered whether it described a parabolic or sine curve. To his great surprise he realized he was curious to find out how and where this curve might continue beneath the thick, bright blue woolen scarf.
    My father, Dietrich Berger, didn’t speak to the young ice skater at first. He just went to the Lahn every afternoon and took a look around. The youngest of four children, he was still living at home with his mother. As his elder brother had already moved out and his mother was a widow, the burden of being the man of the house fell on his shoulders. He bore it stoically, however, and didn’t find it too heavy, maybe because it never occurred to him to think about it. Although his two sisters mocked and insulted him, and laughed when he told them what time they had to come home at night, they were pleased that he had taken on the responsibility for the family.
    I barely knew my father’s mother. She died when I was small, and all I recall is her stiff woolen skirt over a taffeta petticoat that made a singing sound when it rubbed against her nylon tights. Aunt Inga said she was a saint. But my mother said something different: yes, her mother-in-law had always helped other families out, but she had never kept her own household in order, seldom cooked, and she might have spent a little more time looking after her children. My father was terribly pedantic: he loved systematic orderliness, methodical tidying, and efficient cleaning. Chaos caused him physical pain and so most evenings he would clear up after his mother. The four children didn’t develop any sense of mischief and wit from their pious and sober mother. My father learned how to amuse himself—if not others—only later, from my mother, long after he had actually dared to talk to her at the end of the Marburg skating season.
    When the ice finally began to lose its luster and puddles were starting to collect under the bridges, my father plucked up courage, and after a fortnight of their circling around each other every day he introduced himself, saying, “On average, the kinetic friction coefficient of skates on ice is 0.01. No matter how heavy the person is. Isn’t that astonishing?”
    Christa blushed deeply and saw that the ice shavings on the toe picks of her skates had already melted and were falling from the bare metal like tears. No, she didn’t know that, and yes, it was astonishing. Then both of them fell silent. Eventually, after a very lengthy pause, Christa asked how he knew