writing on and through; a scene from Berlin

The only cure, for writers, is writing on. You will hear what you don't want to hear. You will ponder it in your heart. You will call a friend (no, be honest, the friend called you), and she will listen, and then you will carry on. You know what you can do, and you will do it.

Yesterday, while contemplating the fate of a book I have been writing for a very long time, I returned to Berlin, a story that challenges me deeply and, at the same time, brings me great joy. It's the story I'm supposed to be writing right now, for many, many reasons. It's a book I daily thank Tamra Tuller for. Yesterday I reached the halfway mark. It is with this scene that the story turns:

            "What
are you going to do?" Mutti asks.

            "About
what?"

            "I
know you, Ada. You're scheming."

            There
are hard lines beneath my mother's eyes and shadows caught between them. Her hair is thistles. The light from the window glows through
it, then storms her face with a sea-colored green. Sometimes when I look at my mother's face I see every man
she ever loved and how much loving bruised her.

            "I
think it's pretty obvious."

            "What
is?"

            "That
there's nothing I can do."

            "Nothing?"

            "It's
impossible, Mutti. You know how it
is. The Turks are their own
country. I can't save Savas."

            She
straightens suddenly then shivers with the cold, unsatisfied. She pulls her thin sweater across her
chest and buttons it up to her chin, knows that I'm lying, because if I knew
how to rescue Savas I would. If I
knew where to find him, that's where I'd be. The truth doesn't sit well with
Mutti.

            She
stares at me for a long time.
Draws her index finger across the bridge of my
nose. "Impossible has never
stopped you," she says, and I wonder how much she knows about everything I will always want, everything I'm planning. I wonder whether, in
my dreams, I called out for Stefan.

            "You
can't save the world, Ada. You
know that, don't you?"

            "Somebody
has to try," I say, and I see the hurt go through her.