Man out of time
Totally AU. This idea came to me out of the blue and I've no clue as to where it's going so I'm as much in the dark as anyone out there who might read it and hopefully comment on it. Based on the premises that it wasn't Ruth who left after Cotterdam.
The first couple of sentences are in German and then I have taken the easy way out and chosen to use English.
Dieter Grosse straightened and raised his hand to show his mother that he'd heard her. But of course she called out again
"Genug fur heute sohn. Lass es komm und iss."
Entering the small kitchen of their isolated farmhouse he smiled to himself as the small grey haired woman who was the centre of his universe pointed to the sink and the bar of soap and towel that rested there.
"Wash your hands Dieter, after all cleanliness is next to Godliness and then we can eat."
He hurried to do her biding, he always did as she told him, he was a good son, a son who knew just how much he owed his mother and the whole of his life was dedicated to making her happy and proud of him. He was vaguely aware that sometime in the past he'd been a very different man, a man that no mother would have been proud of but now he had the chance to redeem himself and he was grateful for that chance. As he hunched over the low sink he glanced at his mother as she stirred what smelt very much like rabbit stew and he had one of the strange visions that sometimes beset him. In his mind's eye he saw a small dark haired woman whose face he couldn't quite see; she was bent over a keyboard of some sort and was surrounded by people who seemed to be rushing hither and thither but she was an oasis of calm amid the chaos.
Suddenly he felt empty and desolate as though he had lost everything that had ever mattered to him and he couldn't help but shudder and sigh.
Ada Grosse watched Dieter closely, she always watched him closely, she couldn't lose him,she would not lose him. She had lost one son and to lose another; well that would be too much for an old woman to bear. She knew with the instinct only a mother could have that he still had too many thoughts of his past, a past that plagued him and made him wake in the night screaming and covered in sweat. Maybe she thought tonight it might be a good idea to give him a little more medication than usual.
It would not do him any harm she told herself and he was a lot happier and easier to control when he wasn't thinking too deeply. She couldn't afford for him to think to deeply, he might begin to remember and then everything would change and she would be alone again. She didn't want to die alone.
After all she told herself it was for his own good, he was happy here with her. They were happy with their lives here in the glorious isolation of their farm in what had been East Germany. They were left alone by their neighbours who thought them both strange and standoffish aded to that there was a rumour in the neighbourhood that Dieter Grosse had been a member of the dreaded and hated Stasi. A rumour that Ada did nothing to dispel as it meant visitors to the property were few and far between and the few who did make the journey into the forest would always be at pains to tell anyone who would listen that they'd not seen hide nor hair of the elusive son. In fact some doubted that he even existed and that suited Ada just fine.
Later as they sat by the fire Dieter told his mother that he'd be going into the forest that surrounded their farmhouse sometime in the coming week as he needed to cut wood for the forthcoming winter; a task that they both knew he hated and dreaded in equal measure. There was something about the quietness, the isolation, the fact that he was entirely alone performing a mundane task that he had done countless times before that disturbed him and made him think about all the bad things he'd done in his life. Not that he could have told anyone what those things were, they were just vague impressions that skipped in and out of his consciousness never staying long enough for him to analyse them.
There was that word again "analyse" Why did it mean so much to him? He knew that it was important, no he corrected himself it was not the deed that intrigued him it was the person who performed that deed that was? Was what? He leant forward with his head in his hands unable, unwilling to dig deeper into his past; a past that he knew would hurt him and more importantly hurt others who cared for him.
But that just raised more questions, as far as he was aware he cared for no one else in the world but his mother and he would never hurt her but he had hurt people in the past. He was sure of that. And he thought someone was missing him but he knew no one well enough for them to miss him. Or did he? Every time he tried to ask his mother about his past she got upset and cried so he'd stopped asking but he'd lived somewhere else besides this farmhouse and he had done something else other than work on the land and with their animals but the harder he searched for answers the harder the puzzle became and the more his head ached; especially the scar on the back of his head.
His mother had told him it was the result of a motor bike accident but he could never remember owning a motor bike and why he wondered did it look so much like the scar a bullet wound would leave. And for that matter how did he know what a bullet wound looked like? And what about all the other scars on his body? Where had they come from?
"Stop it Dieter, you think too much and you know how much it upsets you when you can't remember things. It will all come back to you in time I promise it will my son, you will just have to be patient." And with her voice soft and cajoling she passed him a hot chocolate."Sip it slowly it's still hot." He took it from her and smiled. She always knew what he was thinking and how to calm him and he was grateful to her for that.
Ada Grosse watched with satisfaction as he drained the mug. He would sleep well tonight, there would be no dreams, no recollections to haunt him and she would make sure she kept him busy over the next few days catching up around the farmhouse so she could accompany him into the forest .
The forest was a dangerous place in more ways than one. The forest had brought him to her but it could just as quickly take him away again.
I would be very interested to know what you think about this and if you think it's worth carrying on with it?
My apologies to all German speakers. The two sentences translate as
"Enough for today son. Leave it, come and eat."
