Day seven. You wake at noon. The light through the courtyard window is a noon-light in a summer that is not yet past its middle.
Your ears are still in the music a little. The apartment is yours in the way places you have been in for a week are yours.
The book of Ukrainian poems is on the table. The postcard from Frau J is on the mantel. The cup you used two nights ago is still in the sink because you have not yet done dishes in this kitchen.
At one o'clock Berlin time, which is seven in the morning where your mother is, she will have been at the library since six. Upstate-library hours begin at eight for the public. She will have had two cups of coffee by now. She will not yet have eaten.
You make the call. You have not called since you landed. Day Seven is a number your mother will have been counting since Day Zero.
The kitchen is where you make the call.
The phone rings twice. Your mother picks up on the second ring — she has walked from the front desk to the office. Berlin to upstate is a number she has been waiting to see for a week.
Are you eating?
That is the first question. That is the question she has been holding.
You tell her you are eating. You are eating. The lie is small and it is true. You have eaten two pieces of bread with cheese today and a piece of bread with cheese yesterday. This is eating.
She asks where you are. You say Kreuzberg. She says that is the same place you told her you were going. You say yes.
She asks what Kreuzberg looks like. You tell her it looks like a neighborhood in a city, which is true. You tell her there is a bakery downstairs. You do not tell her about the bookstore or the club or the man.
Your free hand is on the book of Ukrainian poems on the table. You realize your free hand is on the book. You put your hand in your lap.
She asks if the apartment has a phone. You say no — you are on a phone now. She asks if you are drinking water. You say yes.
A book-cart rolls past on her end. You hear it first.
You tell her about the landlady's knee.
Your mother says the thing about the landlady's knee that someone who is a daughter herself would say about a landlady's knee.
She asks if you have spoken to your father. You have not. She does not ask again.
She tells you Charlotte drew a dog with three ears last week and told everyone it was a listening-dog.
You do not ask how Charlotte is. You know Charlotte is. A child who draws a dog with three ears and gives the dog a name is.
Your mother says Charlotte asked about you. Your mother does not say what Charlotte asked. Your mother says only that Charlotte asked.
You ask about her. She is reading a book about Siberian birds, she tells you, because she likes the names of the birds in Russian, which she says she learned from your grandmother. She has not said this before.
The hand not holding the phone has gone to your ribs without your telling it to.
You feel the shape of the silence after she says it. She feels the shape too. She moves on.
You say you will call her again in three days. You do not say on which day. You do not say what time. Ok, she says.
You hang up.
You sit in the kitchen. The kettle is not on. The book of Ukrainian poems is still on the table.
I did not tell her about the book.
The book is on the table and your mother is on a morning in upstate New York and the Russian birds are in Siberia and the grandmother is in the kettle-that-is-not-on and in the bird-names your mother is learning. That is what the call was.
You put on your shoes. You go out. The street is dense at lunch hour. Your body wants the walk. You go fast, cutting east through a side-street to avoid Karl-Marx-Allee. A pigeon lifts off a bench as you pass. You have nowhere to be. The walking is the point.