The blind side of the heart

THE WORLD IS ALL BEFORE US

Two girls lay on a white-enamelled metal bedstead, taking turns to put their bare feet against the warm copper of the hot-water bottle. The little one kept trying to get the bottle over to her side of the bed, pushing with her toes and shoving with her heels. However, at the last moment her sister’s long leg would stop her. Helene admired the length of Martha’s legs and her slender, graceful feet. But the apparently effortless determination with which Martha claimed the hot-water bottle for herself, against Helene’s wishes, drove her to despair. She braced her hands against her sister’s back and tried to find a way for her cold toes to get past Martha’s legs and feet under the heavy covers. The candlelight flickered; every breath of air caused by the scuffling under the blanket as it suddenly rose and fell made the flame gutter. Helene wanted to laugh and cry at once in her impatience, she compressed her lips and reached out for her sister, whose nightdress had ridden up, so that Helene’s hand came down on Martha’s bare belly, Martha’s hips, Martha’s thighs. Helene wanted to tickle her, but Martha twisted and turned, Helene’s hands kept slipping away, and soon Helene had to close her fingers and pinch to get hold of any part of Martha at all. There was a tacit agreement between the two sisters: neither of them must utter a sound.
Martha didn’t cry out, she just held Helene’s hands tight. Her eyes were shining. She squeezed Helene’s hands between hers so hard that her finger joints cracked, Helene squealed, she whimpered, Martha squeezed harder until Helene gave up and the little girl kept whispering: Let go, please, let go.
Martha smiled. She wanted to read a page or so of her book now. Her little sister’s blonde eyelashes fluttered, the curve of her eyes showed under them. How fine the network of veins was round the eye. Of course Martha would forgive Helene sooner or later. All this just because of a copper hot-water bottle at their feet. Helene’s pleading was a familiar sound, it soothed Martha. She let the little girl’s hands go, turned her back to her sister and pulled the quilt away with her.
Helene was freezing. She sat up. And although her hands still hurt she reached out with them, touched Martha’s shoulder and took hold of her thick braid, which had little curls escaping from it everywhere. Martha’s hair was both soft and unruly, almost as dark as their mother’s black hair. Helene liked to watch when Martha was allowed to comb Mother’s hair. Then Mother would sit with her eyes closed, humming a tune that sounded like a cat purring. She purred contentedly in several different musical registers while Martha brushed and combed her thick, long hair, grooming it like an animal’s coat. Once Helene had been at the sink washing a sheet, and when all the soap was rinsed away she wrung it out over the big bucket, taking care not to splash any water on the kitchen floor. It was only a matter of time before Mother cried out. Her cry was not a high, clear sound, but low and throaty, uttered with the fervour of some large animal. Mother reared. The chair she had just been sitting on crashed to the floor. She pushed Martha away, the brush fell to the floor. She flailed out with her arms, violent, aimless movements, her hairslides and combs flying off the table, she hooked her foot round the chair, picked it up and flung it in Helene’s direction. Her loud cries reechoed as if the earth itself had opened up and was growling. The crochet work lying on the table shot right across the room. Something had pulled a strand of Mother’s hair, tweaking it.
But while Mother shouted at her daughters, cursing them, complaining that she’d given birth to a couple of useless brats, Helene kept on and on repeating the same thing like a prayer: May I comb your hair? Her voice quivered: May I comb your hair? As a pair of scissors flew through the air she raised her arms to protect her head: May I comb your hair? She huddled under the table: May I comb your hair?
Her mother didn’t seem to hear. Not until Helene fell silent did Mother turn to her. She bent over to see Helene under the table more clearly. Her green eyes were flashing. Stop that, snorted Mother. Straightening up, she brought the flat of her hand down on the table so hard that it must have hurt her. Helene had better come out from under that wretched table this minute. She was even clumsier than her big sister. Martha looked at the girl with the bright golden curls crawling out and carefully standing up as if she were a stranger.
You want to comb my hair, do you? Mother laughed nastily. Huh, you can’t even wring out the laundry properly! Mother snatched the sheet out of the bucket and flung it on the floor. Maybe your hands are too fine for such work? Mother gave the bucket a vigorous kick, and then another, until it fell over with a clatter.
Helene instinctively jumped and flinched away. The girls knew their mother’s fits of rage well; it was only when they came on so suddenly, without the slightest warning, that they were taken by surprise. There were tiny bubbles on their mother’s lips, new ones formed, shining. There was no mistaking it, Mother was actually foaming at the mouth, seething, boiling over. Slavering, she raised her arm. Helene stepped sideways and grasped Martha’s hand. Something brushed Helene’s shoulder in passing and, as Mother screeched, clattered to the floor and broke in half. Glass shattered. Thousands of tiny splinters of glass, thousands upon thousands. Helene whispered the unimaginable, incredible number, thousands upon thousands. Thousands upon thousands of them glittering. Mother must have snatched her Bohemian glass vase off the dresser. Helene wanted to run away, but her legs felt too heavy.
Mother doubled up, sobbed and sank to her knees. The broken glass must be coming through the fabric of her dress, but that didn’t bother her. Her hands ploughed through the green splinters and the first blood sprang between her fingers; she cried like a child in a thin little voice, asked if no damn God would help her; she whimpered, and finally she kept on stammering the name Ernst Josef, Ernst Josef.
Helene wanted to bend down, kneel beside her mother, comfort her, but Martha firmly held her back.
This is us, Mother. Martha spoke sternly and calmly. We’re here. Ernst Josef is dead, like your other sons, he was born dead, do you hear me, Mother? Dead, ten years ago. But we are here.
Helene could hear the anger and indignation in Martha’s voice. It wasn’t the first time she had faced up to their mother.
Ah! Mother cried out as if Martha had thrust a dagger into her breast.
Martha went out of the room, taking Helene with her.
Nauseating, whispered Martha, we really don’t have to listen to such things, little angel. Come on, let’s go.
Martha put her arm round Helene. They went into the garden and hung out the washing.
Again and again, Helene felt impelled to look up at the house, where Mother’s wailing and screaming could be heard through the open window, but dying down now and becoming intermittent, finally stopping altogether, so that Helene was afraid their mother had bled to death or done herself some really serious injury.
And in addition Helene thought, as she sat up in bed beside Martha, that perhaps their mother assumed her screaming might work only in front of the children. On her own, it must seem pointless. What use was screaming if there was no one to hear you? Helene shook herself, she felt so cold, and touched her sister’s braid, the braid that put out tiny curls, soft, fine little curls, the braid that was part of her kind sister who always protected her in any difficulty.
I’m freezing, said Helene. Please let me come in with you.
And she was glad when the mountain of bedclothes in front of her opened and Martha reached out a hand, holding the quilt up with her arm so that Helene could get underneath it and snuggle down. Helene nuzzled her nose into her sister’s armpit, and when Martha went back to her book Helene pressed her face into her back, taking deep breaths of the warm, familiar scent. Helene wondered whether she ought to say her bedtime prayers. She could always fold her hands. She felt good. A surge of gratitude passed through her, but she was grateful to Martha, not God.
Helene played with Martha’s braid in the shadow cast by the candlelight. Its muted glow made her hair look even darker than it was; those tiny curls were almost black. Helene stroked her forehead with the end of Martha’s braid; the hairs tickled her cheeks and ears. Martha turned a page of her book and Helene began counting the freckles on her sister’s back. Helene counted Martha’s freckles every evening. Once she was sure of the number on her left shoulder as far as the birthmark at the top of her spine, she moved the braid aside and counted the freckles on Martha’s right shoulder. Martha didn’t object; she turned another page and chuckled softly.
What are you reading?
It’s not your sort of book.
Helene loved counting. It was exciting and soothing. When Helene went to the baker’s, she counted the birds she saw on the way to the shop and the people she met on the way back. If she left the house with her father she counted the number of times his big sandy dog Baldo lifted his leg, and how often people greeted them, and she liked to score high numbers. Once she played them off against each other: each greeting cancelled out one lift of the dog’s leg. Now and then acquaintances addressed Helene’s father as ‘Professor’, which was more an expression of flattery than a misunderstanding. Everyone knew that although Ernst Ludwig Würsich had been publishing philosophical and literary books for some years now, setting them in his printing works, that didn’t make him a professor. Mayor Koban stopped and patted Baldo’s head. The two men discussed the number of copies of the commemorative Town Council volume to be printed, and Koban asked Helene’s father what kind of dog his was. But Father always declined to speculate on the mixture of breeds in Baldo and just replied: A good dog.
Helene was surprised to see how many of their acquaintances hurried past in silence as soon as she came out into the street with her mother. Mother herself didn’t seem to notice. Helene counted quietly, in secret, and often she scored no more than a single greeting. Frau Hantusch the baker’s wife, who almost hugged Father when they met, didn’t even look at mother and daughter. Instead she lowered her umbrella slightly, holding it in front of her like a shield to make sure that no glances were exchanged. Helene supposed it must have been Martha who once told her that Mother wasn’t really known as Frau Würsich at all. The people who lived in Tuchmacherstrasse spoke of her as ‘the foreign woman’. It was true that she had married that highly regarded citizen of Bautzen Herr Würsich the master printer, but she was still a foreigner, even behind the counter of his printing works or out in the street with their daughters. Although it was very usual in Lusatia for couples to marry in the bride’s home town, even ten years after the marriage there was still gossip about the origins of this particular bride. It was said that husband and wife had been married at a registry office in Breslau. A registry office – there was a dubious sound about that. Everyone knew that the foreign woman didn’t go to St Peter’s with her husband on Sundays. Rumour said she was ungodly.
Her daughters had been baptized in the cathedral, but that made no difference. The inhabitants of Bautzen obviously felt that a wedding not celebrated in church tainted their own respectable reputation. No one would deign to pass the time of day with the foreign woman. Every glance was accompanied by whispering and a disapproving shake of the head, even if Selma Würsich couldn’t meet that glance because, with wise foresight, she paid more attention to the rare finds she might spot on the paving stones than to the citizens of the town. Whether proudly or awkwardly, the people in the street ignored Helene and her mother, looking over the head of the woman crouching on the ground or right through her. If Helene met her father’s friend Mayor Koban while she was holding her mother’s hand, the mayor crossed the road without a word. Judge Fiebinger’s sons laughed and turned to stare, because they thought the flimsy fabrics Mother wore in summer were improper and her voluminous skirts in winter odd. But Mother seemed to notice none of this. She bent down, radiant, and showed Helene a little glass bead she had found. Look, isn’t that lovely? Helene nodded. The world was full of treasures.
Whenever Mother left the house she collected things she found on the ground – buttons and coins, an old shoe that looked as if it had another few months’ wear in it, perhaps it would be good for something, at least the shoelace was new, unlike the sole, and the hooks on the upper part seemed to Mother very rare and particularly valuable. Even a coloured piece of broken china down by the river would elicit a cry of delight from her if its edges were washed smooth by the water. Once, right outside their door, she found a goose’s wing that could be used as a feather duster and wept tears of emotion.
On that occasion Martha had said it was more than likely that someone had left the feather duster there on purpose, just to see the foreign woman bend down and pick it up. The feathers were already worn short with use, and several of the quills stuck out like broken teeth, shiny and bare.
Mother collected such feather dusters, although she seldom used them. She hung up the birds’ wings on the wall over her bed. A flock of birds to escort souls, that was how she described her collection. Only wings that she had found herself earned a place there above her bedhead. There were nine now, this one included, and she was hoping for a tenth. Once there were ten, she could complete the twenty-two letters of the alphabet and cast light on the roads ahead, as she put it. Neither of her two daughters asked where which souls were coming from and where they were to be escorted. The significance of a wandering soul, founded on or borrowed from the idea of parallel worlds, seemed to them eerie. It implied that side by side with their own world, where an inanimate object was an inanimate object and a living being a living being, there was another in which a reciprocal relationship between lives and objects existed. Helene covered her ears. Wasn’t it difficult enough even to imagine what a soul was made of? And what might happen to a soul if it went wandering? Did it stay the same soul, individual, identifiable? Were we really destined to meet again in another world at a given time? That was what Mother threatened them with. When I’m dead we’ll meet again, we’ll be united. There’s no escaping it. Helene was so scared that she didn’t want to know any more about souls. Mother knew of an alleged purpose for every object, inventing one if necessary. Over the years of her marriage the house had filled up with things, not just in the closets and glass-fronted cupboards; a landscape with a will of its own was always threatening to grow in the attic among the pieces of furniture there. Mother laid out hills and mounds of objects, collections of items for purposes both certain and uncertain. Only Marja the housekeeper, who was called Mariechen by her employers and was no more than a few years older than Mother herself, managed, by dint of great patience and perseverance, to create any visible kind of order in some of the rooms. Mariechen ruled the kitchen, the dining room and the narrow stairs to the two upper storeys. In Mother’s bedroom, however, and the room next to it you could hardly find any path to tread, and there was seldom a chair clear enough for anyone to sit on it. Mother collected branches and pieces of string, feathers and pieces of fabric, and no broken china could be thrown away; no box, however battered; no stool eaten away by woodworm, even if it wobbled because one of the rotten legs was now too short. If Mariechen turned anything out of the kitchen Mother took it to the upstairs rooms, where she would deposit the pan with the hole in it or the broken glass, confident that one of these days she would find a place and a use for the item. No system was discernible in her collection, only Mother herself had any idea which pile to search for a certain newspaper cutting and under which heap of clothes she had put the valuable Sorbian lace. Wasn’t the filigree pattern of that lace wonderful, where had such delicate lilies ever been seen as those growing vigorously in it?
In search of a woollen winter dress now to be Helene’s, a dress that Martha hadn’t worn for nearly ten years, Mother had been rummaging inside the highest mountain of clothes, which rose almost to the ceiling. She had soon disappeared entirely under it and finally crawled out with a different dress, one that was already too small for her younger daughter. In the course of her search the pile of clothes had been scattered far and wide, and now covered the bookshelves, two chairs and the beaten track through the room itself. It seemed to Helene as if the house must soon burst apart from the sheer volume of stuffing inside it. Mother bent down, picked up something here and something there, put those items aside to left and right of her, and thus worked her way to the corner of the room. There she came upon a round hatbox near the floor. She clasped the hatbox to her breast as if it were a prodigal son.
She had once brought back the hat she wore at her engagement party to her married home in this box, an unusually wide-brimmed hat with a veil and magpie feathers shimmering in shades of dark blue, almost black. Tenderly, she stroked the fine grey paper of the lid and caressed its almost pristine sides. But then she eyed the hatbox suspiciously, she turned it this way and that, she shook it and there was a clinking inside as if the engagement hat had turned into nails or coins. For a while, Mother tried undoing the violet satin ribbon wound several times round the box with shaking fingers, until she lost patience and her face twisted with anger. She flung the box at Martha’s feet with a cry of: You do it!
Martha picked up the hatbox, which now had a large dent in it. She looked around; she couldn’t see a place clear for her to put down this treasure. So she took the box to the kitchen and placed it on the table there. Helene and Mother followed her. Martha’s quick hands skilfully undid the knots.
Mother wanted to lift the lid herself. She sighed when she looked into the box. A sea of buttons and other sewing things came into view, flowers worked in lace, small scraps of fabric presumably kept for covering buttons still bare or in need of renovation.
Mother had to sit down on a chair and breathe deeply. As she did so her ribcage rose and fell as if she were fighting off rising excitement with all her might. She sobbed, tears ran down her cheeks and Helene wondered where, in her slender mother, such an apparently inexhaustible supply of tears could be stored.
Mother had gone to lie down late in the afternoon, and now the girls were sitting by her bed, Helene on the stool, Martha in the rocking chair. Helene was bending over the round box, busy fishing out hooks and eyes both large and small, gold and black, white and silver. She found a clump of moth cocoons in the tangle of tapes and braid. The empty shells of the larvae still stuck to the fabric. Helene looked round. Mother was propped against a tall pillow. She had laid one hand on the little chest with two drawers that held picture postcards and letters, as well as dried flowers and loose playing cards – you never knew, you might assemble a full pack some day, or a particular card might be needed for a pack that was incomplete without it. The lower drawer of the little chest contained mainly postage stamps and coupons from packs of coffee. Mother had closed her eyes after telling her daughters to keep quiet and do their work. She had been suffering from a violent headache for hours, and lines of pain were traced on her forehead between her eyes. Obviously Martha thought this was a good opportunity. The task she had been given must seem to her laborious and pointless: she was supposed to be disentangling the threads of cotton reels thrown carelessly into the needlework box and winding them up tidily again. Then she was to sort the reels by colour and type of thread.
As soon as Mother’s arm slipped heavily off the little chest in her sleep and her breath came regularly, Martha took out a slim, mustard-coloured book from under her apron and began reading it. She chuckled to herself, while her feet jiggled up and down as if she were about to start dancing or at least jump up any minute now. Helene looked longingly at Martha; she would have loved to know what made her so cheerful. Helene examined the tangled tapes in her hands. She spotted a white maggot on the dark-blue velvet of her dress, laboriously crawling in the direction of her knees, and felt nausea. And now another tiny maggot dropped out of what she had thought were the empty cocoons in her fingers, to land on her lap not far from the first. The maggot writhed, unsure which way to go. Hoping that Martha could rescue her, Helene whispered: Can I throw this away?
Leaf-green light shone through the drawn net curtains. From time to time a breath of wind made them billow out and tiny motes of dust danced in the narrow shaft of sunlight that shone briefly through the window. Martha rocked forward, stopped the rocking chair there for a few seconds, then rocked back. She turned a page and did not deign to give the tangled tapes in Helene’s hand so much as a glance. When she shook her head sternly, but still smiling, Helene wasn’t sure whether Martha had even heard her; perhaps she was lost entirely in her own world and her thoughts were with her book, or perhaps she was simply glad not to be holding this tangle of moth-eaten tapes and larvae herself. Helene retched. She cautiously put the tangle down on Mother’s bed. Assorted suspender belts, stockings and items of clothing that Mother had worn over the last few days were draped over the end of it.
Martha leaned back in the rocking chair and stretched her legs. With a delicate movement, she put the curl that had slipped out of her thick braid back behind her ear. Now and then she clicked her tongue, crossed one leg over the other and narrowed her eyes, licking her lips as if she particularly liked the flavour of whatever she had been reading. Only when Father came into the room with his dog did she start in surprise. Baldo had his tail between his legs and immediately lay down in front of the stove.
But Father did not notice his elder daughter’s red cheeks or the book that she hastily hid under her apron. He had eyes only for his wife. He didn’t know how he was going to say goodbye, and sighed as he walked up and down in his hussar’s uniform. Every time he turned, he looked at his wife as if asking her for help, turning to her for advice. It looked to Helene as if Father were about to say something, but he just breathed heavily, swallowed and finally sent the girls out of the room.
Later Helene knocked at the closed door; she wanted to say goodnight, and hoped for a glimpse of her father’s new sword and the sash of his uniform. As Helene saw it, the fear that Martha and her mother felt at the thought of Father going to join the army was entirely unfounded. With his imperial moustache, which he wore a little shorter than the Kaiser himself, more out of admiration and respect than because of any initial insidious doubts, with his rock-hard confidence and his love for the girls’ strange mother, Father seemed to her absolutely invulnerable. That impression was reinforced by the gleam and sparkle of the new curved sword. Even as Helene knocked, the door opened just a crack. Father was kneeling on the dark oak of the wooden floor that had been polished only a few days ago. It smelled of resin and onions. He was resting his forehead on Mother’s hand.
Goodnight, Helene whispered, and glanced at the sword that Father had put down casually on the rocking chair. When he did not reply, Helene supposed he was asleep. She tiptoed over to the rocking chair, ran her finger over the blade and was surprised to find how blunt it was, how cool. A faint click of the tongue startled her; she saw Father waving one hand, indicating that she was to go away so that he could be alone with Mother. He didn’t mind Helene’s feeling the blade of his sword, but he didn’t want her there. He had to say goodbye to his wife. Selma Würsich lay stretched out on the bed with her eyes closed; perhaps it was her high collar keeping her neck straight and the smell of onions luring tears from her closed eyes. Mother heard nothing, saw nothing, said nothing.
Helene retreated quietly to the door, walking backwards, and waited, hoping that Father would ask her some question, but he had laid his forehead on the back of Mother’s hand again and was repeating the words: my love, my little pigeon. Helene admired her father for his love. The war could never hurt anyone who loved her mother.
Next evening neither of the girls said goodnight to their father. They heard him pacing up and down in the room next door, and knew he was getting no advice or help. Sometimes he said something, it sounded like: Joy! and then again like: God! Only occasionally, between those words, did they hear his dog whining.
The girls lay snuggling close together. Helene pushed her nose between her big sister’s shoulder blades; from time to time she stuck out her chin and took a breath of air, while Martha turned the pages of her book regularly and laughed quietly to herself. But then, loud and clear, the girls heard their mother’s voice, deep and slightly husky from all her smoking: If you go I shall die.
Helene caressed the faint brown birthmark. Martha’s back was thin and delicate, and she stroked its freckles too, running her finger up and down along the fine lace edging of her sister’s nightdress.
Please, just one word – please.
No begging.
Please. Just one word.
Go on doing that first. Up there, yes, further up.
Helene followed her sister’s instructions and ran her hand over the skin, up the nightdress and Martha’s shoulders, circling there, then down her arm, over its bare skin, once again over her back under the linen nightdress, then down along Martha’s backbone, vertebra by vertebra, she could clearly feel every one of them under the fabric. Then she stopped.
One word.
Star.
Helene moved her hand very slightly, tracking the points of a star, stopped and demanded: More.
Though the star of my fate hath declined.
Helene rewarded Martha. She tickled the back of her neck. Line by line, stanza by stanza, Helene’s hands lured Byron’s words out of her sister’s mouth.
A horse and cart passed by under their window, and as the cart jolted over the cobblestones something jingled and clinked as if it were loaded with glasses. It must be carrying a delivery from the Three Ravens inn, which had moved into its new premises in Tuchmacherstrasse in the spring. The opening had enlivened their street a good deal. The drayman had cluttered up the pavement with his barrels, ladies of the middle class went to the Three Ravens in the middle of the day to drink coffee, while their cooks and housekeepers went shopping up in the Kornmarkt, and in the evening there were hussars bawling at the top of their voices in the street itself, which suddenly seemed too narrow and too small.
At weekends, the town south of the Kornmarkt was now all activity on a Saturday night. Men and women sang and stamped until the small hours to familiar tunes played on a piano. If the piano-player tired and his keyboard fell silent, someone else would bring out an accordion. People came from the little mountain villages at weekends, from Singwitz and Obergurig, even from Cunewalde and L?bau. They went to market in the morning, sold their ladders and ropes, their baskets and jugs, their onions and cabbages, and bought what wasn’t to be had at home, oranges and coffee, fine pipes and coarse tobacco. Then they danced the night away at the Three Ravens, before harnessing the horses to their carts early in the morning and climbing in, or some of them simply pushed handcarts back to their villages in the mountains. But Bautzen was a quiet place during the week.
Helene stroked her sister’s back, she ran the ball of her thumb down Martha’s backbone.
Harder, said Martha, with your nails.
Helene crooked her fingers so that her nails, which were short, could at least touch her sister’s skin. Perhaps she’d let her fingernails grow long for Martha’s sake, file them to points, the way she’d seen a girlfriend file hers.
Like that? Helene traced a star map on Martha’s shoulder blade, drawing lines from freckle to freckle, joining them up to make the constellations she knew. The first was Orion the hunter, wearing Martha’s birthmark on his breast like a shield; the central star of the three on his belt was slightly raised. Helene knew the moments when Martha would stretch, and when she would arch, luxuriating, go rigid and then double up. Cassiopeia merged directly with the Serpent in the star map, a snake with a large head. Ophiuchus the Serpent-Bearer rose in the middle of it. Helene knew that one from a book she had found on Father’s shelves. There were many days when Martha writhed under the touch of Helene’s hands, and if Helene listened carefully she thought Martha’s breathing sounded like a hiss. Helene imagined what it would be like to lift Martha up in the air, carry her, wondered how heavy she would be. Martha’s sighs were unpredictable, Helene teased them out; she thought she knew every nerve and fibre under her sister’s skin, stroked her as if she were playing an instrument that would make music only if the strings were touched in a particular way. In Helene’s eyes, Martha was already a grown woman. She seemed to her perfect. She had breasts with curving little buds, clear and tender and soft, and on some days of the month she secretly washed her little cloths. Only when she wanted to punish Helene for stealing raisins or saying something she didn’t like would Martha give her those little cloths to wash instead. Helene was afraid of Martha’s brusque instructions. She washed Martha’s blood out of the linen, took the little brown bottle of oil of turpentine, unscrewed the top and counted out thirty drops into the water for the final rinse. In winter she hung the little cloths up to dry in the attic, in front of the south-facing window. The turpentine evaporated, and the sun helped to make the cloths bright and white again. It would be years yet before Helene had to wring out any little cloths of her own; she was nine years younger than Martha and had started school only last summer.
Further down, said Martha, and Helene did as she was told, she stroked her sister’s sides further down, all the way to the place where her hips curved gently, then on back and round to the base of her spine.
Martha sighed deeply and there was a faint smacking noise as if she were opening her mouth to say something.
Over your kidneys, here, said Helene.
Yes, and up to my ribs, up to my lungs, dear heart.
Helene hadn’t heard Martha turn a page for several minutes now. Martha was lying on her side, her back turned to Helene, still and expectant. Helene’s hands came and went, she heightened Martha’s craving, she wanted to hear another sigh, just one, her hands flew softly over the skin now, no longer touching everything, only a few places, very few, desire made them breathe faster, first Helene, then Martha, and finally both of them; it sounded like the gasping noise you made wringing out laundry when you stood at the sink by yourself, hearing nothing but your own breathing and the gurgling of the laundry in the enamel basin of water, the effervescence of the washing powder, the foaming soda; here it was the gasping of two girls, no gurgling yet, only fast breathing, an effervescent bubbling, until Martha suddenly turned round.
My little angel. Martha took Helene’s hands, the hands that had just been stroking her, she spoke softly and clearly: I come off duty at four tomorrow and you must meet me outside the hospital. We’ll go down to the river. Martha’s eyes were shining, as they often did these days when she announced that they were going for a walk beside the Spree.
Helene tried to free her hands. It was hardly a question, more of a statement when she said: With Arthur.
Martha laid her forefinger on her sister’s lips. Don’t mind.
Helene shook her head, although she did mind. She opened her eyes very wide, she wasn’t going to cry. Even if she had wanted to cry, it wouldn’t be any use. Martha stroked Helene’s hair. Little angel, we’re going to meet him in the old vineyard on the other side of the railway line. When Martha was happy and excited, her laughter gurgled in her throat. He’s going to study botany in Heidelberg. He can live with his uncle there.
What about you?
I’m going to be his wife.
No.
The No came out of Helene’s mouth faster than she could think it, came bursting out. She added, quietly: No, that’s impossible.
Impossible? Anything’s possible, my angel, the world is all before us. Martha was radiant, joyful, but Helene squeezed her eyes shut and obstinately shook her head.
Father won’t let you.
Father won’t let any man come near me. Martha released Helene’s hands and, in spite of her remark, she had to laugh. He loves me.
Father or Arthur?
Arthur, of course. Father just owns me. He can’t give me up. Even if he wanted to, he simply can’t do it. He won’t let anyone have me.
Well, not Arthur, that’s for sure.
Martha turned on her back and clasped her hands as if about to pray. God, what can he do about it? I have two legs, I can walk away. And a hand to give Arthur. Why are you so stern, Helene, why are you so anxious? I know what you’re thinking.
What am I thinking?
You think it’s because of Arthur’s family, you think Father has reservations of a certain kind. But that’s not true. Why would he mind? They don’t even go to synagogue. Sometimes Father says bad things about those people, but haven’t you noticed his smile? He’s making fun of them in a friendly way, like when I call you a grubby sparrow, little angel. He’d never have married Mother if he thought the same way as he talks.
He loves Mother.
Has he told you how they met? Helene shook her head and Martha went on. How he travelled to Breslau and met Fr?ulein Steinitz with her striking hats in the printing works there? She was stylish, he says, a stylish young lady in a sea-green coat, the colour the printers call cyan. She still has it. And she wore a different hat every day.
Stylish, murmured Helene to herself. The word sounded like a chocolate; it was meant to describe something high-class, but chocolates just tasted bitter.
Her uncle was a hat maker and she was his favourite model. She won’t throw out any of those felt confections that look so odd today. I once heard Father telling her angrily she’d been in love with her uncle, that was why she couldn’t part with those old hats. Mother only laughed, she laughed so much that I thought Father’s suspicions must be right. Do you think he minded her being Jewish?
Helene looked at Martha incredulously and narrowed her eyes. But she isn’t. Helene shook her head to reinforce what she said. I mean, not really.
You just don’t notice because she doesn’t wear a wig. And what synagogue would she go to? She doesn’t keep separate sets of dishes, she leaves the cooking to Mariechen. But of course she’s Jewish. You think they call her the foreign woman here in Bautzen because she speaks with a Breslau accent. Do you? Do you really believe it’s a Breslau accent? I don’t, it’s the way her whole family talk. She uses all those words that seem to you familiar, and you have no idea that they show what she is.
Martha, what are you talking about? Helene kept shaking her head slowly and firmly, as if that would silence Martha.
It’s true. She doesn’t have to pretend to us. Why do you think she never goes to church? She gives the cathedral a very wide berth.
It’s because of the meat market, that’s why. She says the butchers’ stalls smell horrible. Helene wished Martha would keep quiet.
But there was no stopping Martha now. When we go to Mass at Christmas with Father and Grandmother, she says someone has to stay at home and cook the meal. What a fib! Why does she have to cook the meal at Christmas, of all times? Because she wants to give Mariechen time off, because she has such a kind heart? No, it’s because she has no business in church with our God at Christmas, that’s all, little angel. Did you never notice before?
Helene leaned her head on her hand the way she saw Martha do it. Have you talked to her about that?
Of course. She says it’s none of my business. I tell her if I want to get married she won’t be found in any church register, and I don’t have her family records so half of my own are missing. Guess what she said? She told me not to be impertinent, she said if I went on like that no one would ever want to marry me.
Helene looked at Martha and knew that Mother was lying. Martha was at least as beautiful as Mother, with the same attractive, narrow nose, the same freckled white skin, the same curving hips. Who’d bother about some kind of old family records?
Martha said it was no good Mariechen teaching them the stitches to embroider their initials on linen for a trousseau. Never mind their initials, their origin tainted them.
Mariechen was considered a wonderful needlewoman and lacemaker, even among her own Sorbian relations. But although women often knocked at the door in Tuchmacherstrasse wanting to order lace handkerchiefs and caps and tablecloths from her, she turned them all down. She was in a steady job, she replied with the smile of a faithful servant. Only very occasionally did she give something as a present to a sister, cousin or niece. Most of the lace and little mats that Mariechen crocheted and embroidered in her spare time stayed in the house. Her absolute loyalty created a strange bond between Sorbian Marja and her mistress, Frau Selma Würsich. Perhaps they simply shared a love of fine fabrics?
Helene looked at Martha. She could see no flaw. Martha appeared to her perfect. Arthur’s glances were by no means the only ones that lingered on her fine features. When Helene crossed the Kornmarkt with Martha, it wasn’t just the young men who looked at her, whistling cheerfully, and wished them good day. Old men too made sounds like grunts and groans. Martha’s steps were light, her strides were long, she stood proud and erect, so that people showed respect when they met her, or that was how Helene saw it. The men clicked their tongues and smacked their lips as if tasting sweet syrup on their tongues. Even the market women addressed Martha as pretty young lady and my beauty. More and more men who would have liked to marry her were to be found every day near the little printing works in Tuchmacherstrasse. If Martha stood behind the counter in the small shop area helping to serve customers, several young men would gather there during the afternoon, getting her to show them different kinds of paper and different typefaces, seldom able to make up their minds. They weighed up the pros and cons, got talking to each other, they boasted of their own businesses or studies with unconcealed glances in Martha’s direction and courted her as best they could. Only when one of them ventured to ask her out for coffee, and she declined with a smile, saying she never went out for coffee with customers, did the point where he decided to order a small print run come closer. But the young men came back another day, they kept watch on each other; every single one of them wanted to make sure that no one else was higher than he was in Martha’s favour. Helene could understand how those men felt, for she herself would have loved to sleep beside beautiful Martha and wake up at her side all her life. Marriage to a man seemed to Helene totally pointless and unnecessary. Marriage was the last thing anyone needed.
So why do you think Father wouldn’t let you marry someone like Arthur Cohen?
Why? Martha put her head back on the pillow, looking annoyed rather than thoughtful, and when she brought out a handkerchief from under the pillow and blew her nose very thoroughly, as Mother did after a long fit of tears, Helene was sorry she’d asked. But then, unexpectedly, Martha’s smile spread over her face, a smile that she could hardly keep back these days, a smile that easily turned to a chuckle and – only if neither Mother nor Father was around – occasionally to wholehearted, exuberant laughter.
Little angel, who’d there be for him to rely on then? Mother? If Mother goes to a fair she isn’t seen for days. Very likely she stays at inns in Zwickau and Pirna dancing with strange men until morning!
Never. Helene couldn’t help smiling, because she didn’t know whether Martha expressed such a supposition just to anger her or whether there was a grain of truth in it.
And who would look after you? Father can’t get on his horse and go off to the war without knowing we’re provided for. He’s afraid, that’s all it is. And he wants me to look after you. I will, too. You wait and see.
Helene didn’t reply. She guessed that every word she said would only make Martha think harder and in more detail than ever about possible escape routes. She was sure that for weeks Martha had thought of nothing but how to begin a new life with Arthur Cohen.
Who’s that book you’re reading by?
It’s not your sort of book.
But I want to know.
You want to know everything. Martha wrinkled her nose; she liked Helene’s curiosity and she liked still being so far ahead of her sister. A year ago, when Helene was finally old enough to start at the Municipal School for Girls on Lauengraben, she could already read and write. She had learned to play the old piano from Martha, who watched with admiration and a little envy to see how smoothly her hands slipped over the keys without practising, how fast her runs were even in the lower octaves, how surely she remembered the melodies that Martha often had to learn laboriously, note by note. And numbers raced around in Helene’s head even faster and more confidently than her fingers moved over the piano keyboard; no matter what numbers Martha threw out for her, Helene had no trouble in making other numbers out of them, taking them apart, dividing them, fitting them together into something new. After only a few weeks the teacher moved Helene up to do lessons with the older girls, giving her exercises for ten-year-olds. Helene was seven at the time. It began to look as if the teacher would have passed on all she knew to the little girl within a few months, before she was supposed to be the right age for it. Helene was ashamed of herself for not growing up fast enough. She was frightened, too. At fourteen, sixteen at the latest, girls left school and went home to their parents, to take over the running of the household and be introduced to men who were believed to be well off and to enjoy a good reputation, one to which a young wife would add. Only a few girls were allowed to go on to the High School, and the other girls in the town knew very well who they were and envied them. If one of Martha’s friends said she would like to be a nursery schoolteacher, her parents asked in disparaging tones whether that kind of thing was really necessary. The family had enough money, they said, the girl was well enough educated, she could already choose between two suitors and have a good, well-to-do husband. Martha’s tales of her girlfriends sounded to Helene like a horror story. She would pause for effect as she described how one particular friend, for instance, wanted to marry for love and had told her parents so. The parents just laughed. In a tone of wise superiority, the girl’s father pointed out that the right man had to present himself first, and love could follow. Meanwhile Judge Fiebinger, whose sons were not to begin their studies until they had done military service in the local regiment, was sending his daughters straight to Dresden, one to the conservatory, the other to the women’s teacher-training college. Martha often told Helene about the judge’s daughters. It was a good thing to be a teacher. A few years ago, Martha used to sit beside that budding teacher the judge’s daughter in school and help her with her sums. Perhaps the girl would never have made it to the High School without her help? Martha whispered in Helene’s ear that if she herself went on like this, Father would send her to study too, to Dresden and Heidelberg, she was sure he would. Her whispering lips touched Helene’s ear, they tickled pleasantly and Helene couldn’t get enough of it. Their father had allowed Martha to train as a nurse, so surely in view of Helene’s clever mind he would consider his younger daughter his pride and joy, he’d send her to Heidelberg where she could be one of the few women to study medicine. When Martha painted such a picture of her future, Helene held her breath, hoping Martha wouldn’t stop telling that story, would go on and on, and picture Helene studying human anatomy some day in a huge lecture room at Dresden University, enumerating the funny names of parts of the body, like spinal cord and vertebral canal. Helene drank in such words when Martha came home with them and repeated them to her sister once or twice, only to forget them soon herself. Helene wanted to know more about the rhomboid fossa and the arteries at the base of the skull, but Martha stumbled over her words, as if she had been caught out. At a loss, she looked at Helene and confessed that the names were all she knew, not where those things were and what they were for. She stroked her little angel’s head and comforted Helene, not very long now and she’d be studying the subject herself, only a few more years, she’d soon see. As soon as Martha’s narrative flow stalled – perhaps she had dropped happily off to sleep beside her sister – less attractive ideas occurred to Helene. She remembered that although Father had recently got her to help with the bookkeeping for the printing works, he just muttered quietly, talking crossly to himself, if she found a mistake in the accounts somewhere. He didn’t want to acknowledge that his younger daughter was clever. All the time Helene sat in her father’s office in the evening doing arithmetic, he never once showed any surprise or pleasure. She drew up whole columns of figures just to get him to stop and marvel at them for a change, to notice that she was soon dealing with his accounts more easily than he did himself. But Father ignored Helene’s efforts. When the teacher asked her parents to visit the school building on Lauengraben and talked to her father, telling him that in the course of the school year Helene had studied all the material supposed to occupy the first four years in many subjects, he smiled in a kindly way, shrugged almost imperceptibly, as was his habit, and looked lovingly at his wife, who was ceremoniously taking a needle she had brought out of the lapel of her coat, who then produced the darning thread she had put in her pocket at home and, in mid-conversation and despite the teacher’s presence, set about darning a hole in her dress with the red yarn. While Helene’s parents were relieved to find that their daughter had not stolen anything and had not been naughty in any other way, they did not understand why the teacher had asked them to come to the school to tell them that she would soon be unable to teach their daughter anything else. She was simply planning to let her read rhymes and fairy tales, if her parents had no objection, she said. Helene’s mother bit through the thread with her teeth; the hole was mended. The dog impatiently slapped his master’s leg with his long tail. The teacher’s enquiring look made Helene’s father uneasy. It was not for him, after all, to tell the teacher what she was to do with his daughter.
When they came home they didn’t say a word to Helene about their visit to the teacher. It was as if their younger daughter were an embarrassment.
Helene wanted to stay on at school, but she entertained doubts, both niggling and more serious, of the dream that Martha had spun for her. Neither of her parents had ever said a word about Heidelberg or studying. Helene did not want to be sent home ahead of time to keep house for her mother and be set to work clearing cupboards of the debris left by moths.
Martha sometimes asked Helene: What do you want to be when you grow up?
But she knew the answer; it was always the same. I want to be a nurse like you. Helene pressed her nose against Martha’s shoulder and breathed in her sister’s scent. Martha smelled like a warm roll and only very slightly of the vinegar that she rubbed into her hands when she came off duty. Helene observed Martha’s smile. Was she glad of Helene’s ever-reliable answer? Did it flatter her to think that the little girl wanted to be just like her? Next moment, however, Helene realized that Martha’s smile had nothing to do with her answer. Martha was stroking the gold-embossed lettering on the cover of her book.
What a lovely present.
Let me see.
Close your eyes, yes, that’s right. You can read it blind.
Helene felt Martha taking her hand, but did not guide it to the book. Instead, she found that she was feeling Martha’s stomach and her navel. Martha’s navel was set in a little hollow, unlike Helene’s, which stood out like a button. Helene squeezed both eyes tight shut and felt Martha taking her finger and pushing it into the pit of the navel.
There, what can you decipher?
Martha felt the slight curve of Martha’s belly. How soft her sister’s skin was. Unlike their mother’s belly, which spread out, particularly below the navel, Martha had a beautiful stomach with only the gentlest swelling. Helene felt Martha’s ribs and thought of the gold letters on the mustard-coloured book. She had deciphered them in secret long ago. Byron, said the letters. So she said: Byron.
Byron. Martha corrected Helene’s pronunciation. Keep your eyes closed and go on reading.
Helene could tell from her sister’s voice that Martha was pleased with her ability to read blind. Go on reading, Martha told her for the second time. And Helene felt Martha taking her hand and guiding it over her belly, circling, running Helene’s hand over her hips, stroking them. Read.
A Selection of Lyrical Poetry.
Helene had noticed the gold letters and had been wondering for some time what exactly lyrical poetry was. But then Martha took her hand again and placed it on her bottom rib.
Can you see under my skin too, little angel? Do you know what’s underneath the ribs here? The liver lies here.
Sisterly knowledge. Remember that, you’ll have to learn it all later. And this is where the gall bladder is, right beside it, yes, there. The word spleen was on Helene’s lips, but she didn’t want to say it, she just wanted to open her eyes, but Martha noticed and told her: Keep your eyes closed.
Helene felt Martha take her hand and guide it up to the next rib, and finally still higher, up to her breast.
Although she kept her eyes tightly closed and couldn’t see, Helene noticed her own feelings and how hot her face was all of a sudden. Martha was still guiding her hand, and Helene clearly felt her nipple and the firm, soft, perfect curve of the breast. Then down into the valley below, where she felt a bone.
A little rib.
Martha didn’t answer, and now her hand was climbing the other hill. Helene peered through her lashes, but Martha’s eyes weren’t on her any more, they were wandering aimlessly, blissfully, under her own half-closed lids, and Helene saw Martha’s lips opening slightly and moving.
Come here.
Martha’s voice was husky; with her other hand she drew Helene’s head towards her and pressed her own mouth on Helene’s. Helene was startled; she felt Martha’s tongue on her lips, demanding, she could never have imagined how rough and smooth at the same time Martha’s tongue on her lips would feel. It tickled, it almost made Helene laugh, but Martha’s tongue grew firm and pressed on Helene’s lips as if searching for something. That tongue opened Helene’s lips and pushed against her teeth. Helene had to breathe, she wanted air, she opened her lips, and now Martha’s tongue was filling her whole mouth. Helene felt her sister’s tongue moving about in it, back and forth, pushing at the insides of her cheeks, pressing against her own tongue. Helene thought of their last walk beside the Spree, and how Martha had told her to stay a few steps behind her and Arthur. Suddenly she noticed that her hand was lying on Martha’s breast all by itself, while for some time Martha’s hands had been moving in her hair and on her back.
They had walked to the causeway lying concealed beyond the vineyard; you could reach it only by passing the willows that grew there. The ground was black and slippery. Come on, called Martha, several metres away, and she ran ahead with Arthur. They jumped from tree stump to tree stump, the soft ground yielded, their bare feet sank into it. Little puddles of gurgling water stood everywhere. Swarms of tiny midges were swirling in the air. Here, at this bend of the river, the Spree had made itself a small bay where the ground underfoot was not firm, land on which few people out for a stroll would ever tread. Marsh marigolds were flowering wherever you looked. The daisy chain that Martha had made Helene on the meadow by the river bank threatened to slip off her head; she held it on with one hand, using the other to carry her shoes and hold up her dress to keep it from getting muddy. It was difficult to see where the ground was at all firm, it kept giving way and, fast as they ran, putting their toes down first, their feet were soon black up to the ankle. The sword-shaped leaves of water lilies had a silvery sheen in the sunlight.
Arthur had put on his bathing costume behind a willow tree and was first into the water; he had flung himself into the current and was flailing about frantically with his arms to keep from being carried downstream. He looked as if he were treading water. The wind blew through the reeds, they swayed and bent down to the surface. Next moment the wind blew everything the other way, the yellowish-green twigs, the curving blades of grass as they bowed down. The rushing sound broke against Helene’s ears. Although Arthur kept calling to them, Martha couldn’t make up her mind to follow him. She didn’t have a bathing costume, she had grown so fast last year that her old one didn’t fit any more.
Let’s leave our petticoats on and just paddle in the water.
Martha and Helene took off their dresses and hung them over the branch of a low-growing willow. The water was icy cold, the chill went right through their calves. When Arthur came close to the bank and made as if to splash them with water, the girls fled. Martha squealed and laughed, and kept calling Helene’s name. Arthur wanted to lie on the grass with Martha at the foot of the slope further downstream, but Martha took Helene’s hand and said she couldn’t go anywhere without her little sister. And there might be grass stains if they lay down in their petticoats. Arthur said she could sit on his jacket, but Martha declined. She pointed to her mouth and showed Arthur how her teeth were chattering.
I’ll warm you up. Arthur put his hands on Martha’s arms, he wanted to stroke them and rub them, but now Martha made her teeth chatter as loudly as she could.
Arthur brought Martha her dress, told her to put it on again and Martha thanked him.
Later the two sisters sat snuggling together on the slope, side by side. A little way further up, Arthur had found some small wild strawberries, and now he was crawling around the meadow on all fours. From time to time he came back to the girls, knelt down in front of Martha and offered her a handful of berries on a vine leaf.
No sooner had he left again than Martha took the berries and put them alternately in Helene’s mouth and her own. They fell on the grass and looked up at the clouds. The wind had died down around them and now carried only a faint scent of wood from the sawmill. Helene breathed in the aroma, mingled with the sweet perfume of some kind of flowers. Martha saw the shape of a hussar in the sky; his horse had only forelegs and even those disappeared if you watched for any length of time. While there seemed to be almost no wind down here, the clouds up above were driving eastwards faster and faster. Helene said she could see a dragon, but Martha said dragons have wings.
No wonder everyone’s talking about mobilization, Arthur called down to them. Seeing you two lying there like that, I don’t feel as if picking berries were difficult!
The sisters exchanged meaningful glances. Arthur’s main interest was in being close to them, they were sure, not in mobilization. Neither of them had any idea, in fact, what he meant by that word. They suspected that his notion of the term was as vague as their own. They heard the wind whistling fitfully up above, whistling a cheerful march. Who was going to war, and what for? Was there a more beautiful place anywhere than the banks of the Spree? And for months the warmth of the sun had inspired such confidence! The holidays would never end; no one would follow the call to mobilization.
That’s all there are, said Arthur when he came back some time later with two handfuls of wild strawberries and sat down in front of the sisters. Would you like them? He reached out his hands to Martha; the berries were rolling about and threatened to fall into the grass.
No, I don’t want any more.
Would you like some?
Helene shook her head. For a moment Arthur looked at his hands, undecided.
Darling, he begged Martha, laughing. They’re for you.
Never mind that, let’s feed the little angel.
Martha held up her hands and took the strawberries from Arthur. Some of them fell on the grass.
Grab her. Martha indicated Helene with a nod of her head. Arthur did as she said, flung himself on Helene, forced her down under him and knelt on her small body, his strong hands pressing her arms to the ground. While Arthur and Martha laughed, Helene struggled, clenched her fists, shouted to Arthur to let her go. She tried arching her spine to throw him off, but he was heavy, he laughed, he was so heavy that her back gave way under the strain. Now Martha forced berry after berry between Helene’s lips as she pressed them together as firmly as possible. Juice was running out of the corners of her mouth and down her chin and throat. Jaws clenched, Helene tried begging them to leave her alone. Now Martha stuffed the little berries up Helene’s nose so that she could hardly breathe and the juice stung the inside of her nostrils. Martha squashed the berries on Helene’s mouth, on her teeth, squeezed them so that the skin around Helene’s mouth was itching from the sweet juice of the berries, until she opened her mouth and not only did she lick the strawberries off her teeth, she licked Martha’s fingers too when her sister pushed them into her mouth.
That tickles. Martha laughed. It feels like, like . . . feel for yourself.
Helene could already feel Arthur’s fingers in her mouth. She didn’t stop to think, she simply bit. Arthur screeched and jumped up.
He had run some way off.
Are you crazy? Martha had looked at Helene in horror. It was only a bit of fun.
And now, feeling Martha’s tongue in her mouth, Helene wondered whether to bite that too. But she couldn’t, there was something she liked about Martha’s tongue, although at the same time she felt ashamed.
Martha shook her awake. It was still dark and Martha was holding a candle. Apparently the girls were to follow their father into the next room. Mother lay there on the bed, rigid. Her eyes were dull, with no light in them. Helene tried to see a gleam of some kind there, she propped her hands on the bed and bent over her mother, but Mother’s eyes never moved.
I’m dying, said Mother quietly.
Father said nothing; he looked grave. He was nervously fingering the pommel of his curved sword. He didn’t want to waste any more time talking about the point of the war and his part in it. He had been expected at the barracks on the outskirts of town since last week and the regiment wouldn’t put up with further delay. His departure could not be postponed or evaded. It was no surprise to Ernst Ludwig Würsich to hear that his wife would rather die than say goodbye. She had frequently toyed with the idea before, had said so, in tones both loud and soft, to herself and to others. Every child she had lost after the birth of Martha had seemed to her a demand for her life to end. The pendulum of the clock on the wall shattered time into small, countable units.
Carefully, Helene approached Mother’s hand. She was going to kiss it. The hand moved and was withdrawn. Helene leaned over her mother’s face. But Mother moved her head aside without giving her daughter one of her usual strange looks. Her four dead children would have been boys. One by one they had died, two still in the uterus, the other two just after birth. They had all had black hair when they were born, thick, long black hair, and dark skin that was almost blue. The fourth son had been breathing noisily on the morning of his birth, breathing with difficulty, he seemed to take a deep breath and then all was still. As if the breath couldn’t leave his little body any more. Yet he was smiling, and newborn babies don’t usually smile. His mother had called the dead child Ernst Josef; she had taken the baby’s body in her arms and wouldn’t let him go for days. He lay in her arms, in bed with her, and when she had to visit the smallest room in the house she took him with her. Later, Mariechen had told Martha and Helene how their father had asked her to make sure that everything was all right, and how she had gone into the bedroom where Mother sat on the edge of the bed with her hair down, cradling her dead baby. Only after days was she heard praying; it was a relief. Mother had recited a long Kaddish for Ernst Josef, although there was no one to say amen, no one to join her in mourning. Father and Mariechen were worried about her, and neither of them wept for the dead child. Whenever anyone spoke to Mother over the next few days, said something to her or asked a question, her voice rose, murmuring words as if she were constantly talking to herself, and the murmuring died down quietly to inaudibility only in the hours when no one spoke to her. Even now she was heard praying every day. The strange sounds coming out of Mother’s mouth sounded like an invented language. Helene couldn’t imagine that Mother knew what she was saying. There was something both all-inclusive and exclusive about them; to Helene’s ear they had no meaning at all, yet they screened the house from the world, rested on it like a silence full of sound.
When Mariechen opened the curtains in the morning Mother closed them again. After that there were only one or two months in the year when Mother woke from her darkness, and then she remembered that she had a living child, a little girl called Martha, and she was ready to play with her in silly ways as if she were a child herself. It was Easter, so Mother thought she would roll eggs down the Protschenberg. She seemed to be in high spirits, she was wearing one of her feather-trimmed hats. She threw it up in the air like a discus and let herself drop in the grass, she rolled over the meadow and downhill, and lay there at the bottom of the slope. Martha ran after her. Ladies and gentlemen with sunshades watched from a safe distance; no longer surprised by the foreign woman’s behaviour, they shook their heads disapprovingly and turned away. Their eggs must seem to them more important than the woman who had just rolled down the hill. Martha’s father had followed his wife and daughter; he bent over his wife and offered her a hand to help her up. Martha, then eight years old, held her mother’s other hand. Mother uttered a throaty laugh, she said she liked his God better than hers, but both of them were just the same, merely the shared imaginary creation of a few deluded people, human worms who for hundreds and thousands of years had spent a large part of their lives brooding over some plausible reason for their existence. A strange, a ridiculous characteristic of living beings.
Ernst Ludwig Würsich took his wife home to calm her down.
Martha was entrusted to the maidservant’s care, and the husband sat beside his wife’s bed. He never expected her to show him respect, he said gently, he would ask her to keep quiet only to show respect for God. He stroked his wife’s brow. Sweat was running down her temples. Was she hot, her husband asked, and he helped his wife to take off her dress. He carefully stroked her shoulders and arms. He kissed the rivulet at her temple. God was just and merciful, he told her. Next moment he knew he had said the wrong thing, for his wife shook her head and whispered: Ernst Josef . . . Only when he closed her mouth with a kiss a few seconds later, and tried to soothe her, did she complete her sentence in a whisper: . . . was one of four. How can you call a God who has taken four sons from me just and merciful?
Tears flowed. Her husband kissed her face, he kissed her tears, he drank her unhappiness and lay down in bed beside her.
In the evening she told her husband: That was the last time, I don’t want to lose any more sons. She didn’t have to ask if he understood her, for whether he liked it or not, he surely did.
Almost ten months later a baby was born. Big and heavy, fair-skinned with a rosy glow, a bald head with huge eyes which within a few weeks were a radiant blue that alarmed its mother. The baby was a girl, her mother could not recognize her as her own. And when her father wanted to take his daughter to the pastor, it was Mariechen who chose the child’s name: Helene.
Helene’s mother paid her no attention, she wouldn’t pick up the baby and could not hold her close. The baby cried as time went on, she grew thin, couldn’t digest the goat’s milk she was given and spat out more of it than she drank. Mariechen put the baby to her own breast to soothe her, but her breast was old and had never smelled of milk, it could give no nourishment, so the baby screamed. A wet-nurse was found to breastfeed Helene. The baby sucked the milk, she grew plump and heavy again. Her eyes seemed brighter every day and her first hair came in, a pale gold down. Her mother lay motionless in bed, turning away her face when anyone brought her the baby. When she spoke of the child she did not say her name, she could not even say my daughter. She called her just the child.
Helene knew about these early years of hers. She had heard Mariechen talking to Martha about them. Her mother would not hear of any god. She had made one room in the house hers, a room for herself alone, and she slept there in a narrow bed under the feather dusters and spoke of them escorting souls. When Helene lay in Martha’s bed in the evening, counting freckles and pressing her nose to Martha’s back, she increasingly found herself adopting, without meaning to, the viewpoint that she supposed was really reserved for a god. She imagined all the little two-legged creatures scrabbling over the globe of earth, devising images of him, thinking up names for him, telling creation stories. The thought of them as ridiculous earthworms, as Mother called them, seemed to her reasonable in one way; in another she felt sorry for them, creatures who, in their own fashion, were doing only as the ants and the lemmings and the penguins did. They set up hierarchies and structures suitable to their species with its thoughts and doubts, both of those part of the system, since a human being free of doubts was unimaginable. She knew how touchily Father reacted to these ideas. And he was especially silent and serious when Mother said, laughing, that she had spent a night with all souls, or he might call it god, and now that she was carrying a son below her heart she felt blessed, so she would soon be going away with the souls, her flesh would be going with them for ever. Helene heard Father’s friend Mayor Koban trying to persuade him to put Mother in an asylum. But Father wouldn’t hear of it. He loved his wife. The idea of an asylum hurt him more than her withdrawal from the world. It did not disturb him that she spent many months a year in the darkened rooms of the house, never setting foot out in Tuchmacherstrasse.
Even when the footpaths through the house grew narrow because his wife kept dragging things indoors during her few wakeful months, collecting them, adding them to various piles over which she spread lengths of cloth in different colours, Father preferred this kind of life with his wife to the prospect of living without her.
While he had once protested against the collecting and gathering, occasionally telling her that she ought to throw some object out, whereupon she would explain to him at great length the possible use of that object – perhaps a particularly battered crown cork which she expected to metamorphose in some way if she kept her eye on it – over the last few years he asked his wife what use something could possibly be only when he felt like listening to a declaration of love. Her declarations of love for what generally seemed to be worthless, superfluous objects were the most exciting stories that Ernst Ludwig Würsich had ever heard.
One day Helene was sitting in the kitchen, helping Mariechen to bottle gooseberries.
Where’s that orange peel I hung up in the storeroom to dry?
I’m sorry, madam, the housekeeper made haste to say. It’s still up there in a cigar box. We needed the space for the elderflowers.
Elderflower tea! Mother scornfully distended her nostrils. It smells of cat pee, Mariechen, how often have I told you so? Pick mint by all means, dry yarrow, but never mind about the elderflowers.
My little pigeon, Father interrupted, what were you going to do with the orange peel? It’s dried already.
Yes, like leather, don’t you think? Mother’s voice was velvety, she waxed lyrical. Orange peel cut from the fruit in a spiral strip and hung up to dry. Isn’t the smell of it in the storeroom lovely? And you should see the spirals twist and turn when you hang them over the stove by a thread – oh, so beautiful. Wait, I’ll show you. And Mother was already racing up to the storeroom like a young girl, looking for the cigar box, carefully taking out the strips of orange peel. Like skin, don’t you agree? She took his hand so that he could feel it, she wanted him to stroke it the way she did, to feel what she was feeling, so that he’d know what she was talking about. The skin of a young tortoise.
Helene noticed how lovingly her father looked at his wife, his eyes followed the way her fingers stroked the dried strips of orange peel, raised them to her nose, lowered her eyelids to distend her nostrils and smell the peel, and obviously he wasn’t going to tell her that this wasn’t the time of year to heat the stove. She would keep the orange peel strips in the cigar box until next winter, and the winter after next, for ever, no one must throw anything away, and Helene’s father knew why. Helene loved her father for his questions and his silences at just the right moment; she loved him when he looked at her mother as he was looking at her now. In silence he was surely thanking God for such a wife.