Correction of Drift: A Novel in Stories

Wanderlust

The missus is standing at the stove, basting the Rostbraten, salting the Spargel. The mister sits, hoping for a foot-long Coney Island dog. “No more Bismarck Schnitzel,” he has told her. “No more Rindfleisch in Bier.” There is a sizzling of fat, a spattering that smarts. She looks for blisters. He suggests butter. Where once she baked a Boston bean, now she stirs the Hühnersuppe. Where once she filled a jelly roll, now she beats the Kirschencreme . The suspect states he was at home with his wife on the night of the kidnapping. The Tallahassee Harbinger September 25, 1934 Wanderlust 98 Pamela Ryder “This is not the old country,” he has told her. “This is not the Rhineland.” She blots the grease. She rinses a platter. “Good-bye, Hasenpfeffer and Leberknödel,” he has said. “Hello , red hots and hot tamales.” She sets the table with her thick china dishes, a boat for the gravy, a cellar for the salt. In the center sits a tumbler with a sprig of something she picked curbside at the corner of Two Hundred and Decatur. The afternoons were long. The mister was usually missing. And she had taken to wandering a bit too far—a pioneer! she thought, in these parts largely unfamiliar: new territories of asphalt and broad avenues, of unclaimed properties and corner lots left to sprout weeds and wild yellow mustard, where, she thought, someone should be planting cabbage for Apfelkraut or cucumber for Gurken mit Kren. But this is not that sort of city. There are no spaded places where someone has staked tomatoes, or sown spinach or beetroot or onion. There are no vacant lots planted in peas for Erbsen mit Schinken or green beans for Bohnen mit Dill. This is a city without cultivation. This is a city that grows broken glass and rusted parts; a city that sprouts damage and rubble, she tells him when he asks or does not ask what she has done all day. There are no shrubs and sundial gardens, she says, when the baby is already in bed and he pleads guilty. There are no backyards bound by privet hedges or gooseberry fences, she tells him when dinner is spoiled and she has been sitting by the window, watching for him to pass beneath the streetlamp that lights the walk and shines in her kitchen. There are no flower shops along the street selling bunches of violets or Edelweiss for luck. No cheese shops selling Liederkranz and Limburger, or Tofen Käse for filling a Strudel. No Fleischerei selling Bratwurst and Leberwurst so pink or white and firm and fragrantly herbed in Wanderlust 99 their skins. No Kaffeehaus or Konditorei selling ten kinds of Torte uprightly sliced and papered under glass; no fish stores where the fish are placed on ice and stay so silvery. This is a city of scales scraped into the street and dull eyes; a city of strangers that see you sideways and step too close by or almost touch while you wait for bread or meat. This is a city of blood-soiled hands and stained aprons and sawdust that sticks to the soles, and scales with no standard of weights and measures. A city that smells of creosote on cold nights when the shiftless stamp and shrug around oil drum fires and stand silhouetted before the flames with their sooty palms upturned for a penny. This is a city of trash heaps and trolley tracks, she told the mister: no swept-clean streets or cobbled lanes that lead to woodlands where someone in Lederhosen might hike past with a rucksack of mushrooms, and a Guten-Tag touch of his cap. No parks with flower beds. No fountains to sit beside with a hamper of black bread and cheese and a bottle for the baby. No outings in Loden and Dirndl with wine baskets and binoculars to the borders of the city where the roads become rutted and cozy and geese cross and quack and you climb to sunny vineyards and ruins of a castle keep. This is a city of open fireplugs that won’t let you pass, and boys with sticks and people you must step over on stoops. This is a city of squatters. Drifters. Loiterers. A city of boarded windows torn off by trespassers and thieves. These are the blocks of past-due properties and trampled paths where...