This is a slight, suggestively written, exquisite novella about fragility, vulnerability and growing up. The story appears to be set in the 1950s, but the exact time does not really matter. Its main character is Erwin, a sensitive and musically gifted eleven-year-old who plays the cello. Erwin lives alone with his mother, a gaudy, short-tempered, self-centred woman who is barely able to cope with her own problems, let alone her son’s. We don’t find out who his father is, although there are tantalizing hints pointing to a musician who may have been either Jewish or involved with the resistance during the Second World War, possibly killed even before Erwin was born.


The mother now has a tempestuous relationship with Dirk, a generally level-headed, understanding man whose first wife died years ago. Dirk has a teenage son, Johan, a foul-mouthed layabout who insinuates that he knows something about Erwin’s father and takes an impish delight in upsetting the boy. Dirk and Erwin’s mother have regular rows, and although Erwin does not know what to make of these slanging matches, Dirk’s remark to the boy that ‘Pain never goes away’ suggests to the reader that both adults are trying desperately to come to terms with their own painful experiences in the past.


Erwin has weekly music lessons with gentle old Mr Bär, who lives in a tenement flat with his wife. To Erwin, the Bärs offer a haven of peace. Music is Erwin’s passion, and Mr and Mrs Bär’s kindness provides an antidote to his mother’s irritability and Johan’s mockery.


His sense of security is threatened when the Bärs take in a lodger, a traumatized, mentally unstable woman who turns out to be their niece. The Bärs are Jewish. Towards the end of the War the niece had been making preparations to get married when her fiancé, who had gone underground, came out of his hiding place too soon, was seized by the retreating Germans and killed. The niece, unable to cope with her loss, has become psychotic. Her behaviour — she appears half-naked in the room during Erwin’s music lessons, and smears the toilet seat and walls with menstrual blood — terrifies the boy. She gives him nightmares. When he is due to perform for a small circle of friends and family and hears that the dreaded niece is going to be there as well, he cuts his own finger with Dirk’s razor so he won’t have to play.


The niece’s behaviour unsettles Erwin because it confronts him with a grown-up world he doesn’t yet want to know about. However, towards the end of the novella, as the Bärs’ niece has gone and the relationship between Erwin’s mother and Dirk finally settles down, Erwin seems prepared to put childhood behind him. As he, his mother and Dirk set out for a week’s holiday at the seashore, he leaves his cello behind for a while, ready for new experiences. A cautiously upbeat ending, then.

‘Open the door,’ she cried. ‘And I mean now! You’re going to Mr Bär’s and that’s final.That poor old man has made all the arrangements for the recital. It’s time you pulled yourself together! Why don’t you ever listen to your mother?’

They had just had an argument.

‘I’ll cut one of my fingers, then I won’t be able to play tonight!’

‘Are you crazy, you can’t miss your recital!’

‘Oh yes I can!’ And he had slipped past her and locked himself in the bathroom, sliding the bolt across the door just in the nick of time.

The cut was deeper than he had thought it would be. Horror-stricken, he let go of the razor. It drifted to the ground like a feather and formed a bright red spot on the drab tiles. In the mirror before him, his waxen face wavered uncertainly between the specks of toothpaste.

‘Open up this instant!’ she yelled.

He rinsed the blood from his wounded finger, but it didn’t stop bleeding. He held up his hand. To staunch the flow, he wrapped a flannel around it.

‘Er-win!!’ she shrieked. (p. 16-7, tr. Susan Massotty)