The blind side of the heart

When Ernst Ludwig Würsich, arriving unannounced one evening in late November, asked the male nurse who had brought him the last few kilometres to Bautzen in a cart to knock on the front door of his house, and Mariechen, alarmed to be roused so late, opened it, hardly recognized him, but finally let him and the male nurse into the parlour as a few words of explanation were exchanged – when he came home his wife’s mind was clouded. Her chamber pot was left outside her door every few hours; that was all anyone saw of her. It was usually Mariechen who emptied it, and three times a day she left a small tray with a meal there. The girls’ mother lay in bed, and for several weeks she had managed to prevent either of her daughters or Mariechen from entering the room.
Their father was taken into the parlour and settled in his armchair. He looked around and asked: My wife, doesn’t my wife live here?
Of course. Mariechen laughed in relief. The mistress is just tidying herself. Would you like a cup of tea, sir?
No, I’d rather wait for her, said Ernst Ludwig Würsich, and with every word he spoke more slowly.
How are you feeling, sir? Mariechen’s voice was higher than usual, clear as a bell, she was anxious to while away the time for him as he waited for the lady of the house to come down, even make him forget it was taking so long.
How am I feeling? The girls’ father looked into space with his one remaining eye. Well, usually I feel as if I’m the man whom my wife sees in me. He suppressed a groan. It looked as if he were smiling.
Although Mariechen said she had let the girls’ mother know as soon as he arrived, her mistress still did not appear. Helene warmed up the soup left over from midday and Martha found something for the male nurse to eat. The man left soon afterwards. Ernst Ludwig Würsich found speaking as difficult as standing up. He spent the first few hours after his return huddled in his big armchair. His daughters sat with him, taking a great deal of trouble not to show that they noticed his missing leg. But looking into his face was difficult; it was as if their own eyes kept moving from his one remaining open eye to the socket now closed by skin that had grown over it, again and again their glances kept slipping that way until they couldn’t stop. The girls tried to find some kind of lifeline; it was more than they could manage to keep looking at just that one eye. They asked about these last few years. Their questions were general; to avoid anything personal, the sisters asked about victory and defeat. Ernst Ludwig Würsich could not answer any of their questions. When his mouth twisted it looked as if he were in great pain, but he was trying to smile. The smile was intended to keep these young ladies, as his daughters now appeared to him, from asking questions. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He was filled with pain.
Helene knocked on her mother’s door and pushed it open, in spite of the books and clothes and lengths of fabric stacked up just inside.
Our father has come home, Helene whispered into the darkness.
Who?
Our father. Your husband.
It’s night-time. I’m sleeping.
Helene kept still. Perhaps her mother hadn’t understood what she said? She stood in the doorway, unwilling to go yet.
Oh, go away. I’ll come down as soon as I feel better.
Helene hesitated. She couldn’t believe that her mother was going to stay in bed. But then she heard her turning over and pulling up the blankets.
Quietly, Helene retreated and closed the door.
Obviously her mother didn’t feel well enough to come down over the next few days either. So the injured master of the house was carried past her bedroom door and up to the top floor, where they laid him down on the right-hand side of the marital bed. Within a few days the dusty bedroom that he and his wife once shared had been turned into a hospital ward. On Martha’s instructions, Helene helped Mariechen to carry up a washstand. During his arduous journey home Ernst Ludwig Würsich’s stump had become inflamed again, and in addition he now had a slightly raised temperature. Pain numbed all his other senses. Not for the first time, it was in the missing leg that he felt it.
For her father’s own sake, Martha arranged to keep him in a carefully calculated state of intoxication. It was meant to last until she had managed to abstract morphine and cocaine in sufficient quantities to be effective from the Municipal Hospital. Martha had been working with Leontine in the operating theatre for some time, and she knew the right moment when such substances could be purloined. The ward sister was of course the only one who had the key to the poison cupboard, but there were some situations in which she had to entrust it to Leontine. Who, later on, was going to measure exactly how many milligrams this or that patient had been given?
Next morning Mariechen made Father a new nightshirt. The window was open; you could hear the crows perching in the young elms outside. Mariechen had hung the girls’ quilts over the windowsill to air. In the evening they smelled of wood and coal. Helene had gone down to the printing works, and had spent some time sitting over the big book with the monthly accounts when the bell rang.
A well-dressed gentleman was waiting outside the door. He stooped slightly and his left arm was missing. With his right arm he was leaning on a walking stick. Helene knew him by sight; he had sometimes come to the printing works in the old days.
Grumbach, he introduced himself. He cleared his throat. He had heard, he said, that his old friend, the master printer who had published his own first poems, was home again. More throat-clearing. It was six years since they had met, he said, and he really felt he must pay his friend a visit. The moist sound as he cleared his throat was obviously not shyness but a frequent necessity. No, Grumbach wouldn’t sit down.
It’s a long time since we last met, Helene heard him telling her father. She couldn’t take her eyes off Herr Grumbach; she was afraid that he was coming too close to her father with all that throat-clearing. Her father looked at him. His lips moved.
Perhaps he might feel better tomorrow? The visitor seemed to be asking himself this question rather than anyone else; he looked neither at Helene nor the maid. Clearing his throat once more, he left.
Contrary to expectations, the visitor did ring the bell again next day. His eyes lit up when he saw Martha, who was not on duty at the hospital that day. He left his umbrella at the door, but politely declined the cup of tea that Helene offered him.
Next day he did accept a cup of tea, and after that he came to visit daily, without waiting to be expressly invited. He drank a great deal of tea, emptying cup after cup, and noisily munching the sugar lump in it. The sugar bowl had to be refilled at every visit. With his remaining thumb, the one-armed guest indicated his back, which still had a shell splinter from the war left in it, so that he walked with a stoop and needed a stick. He avoided mentioning the word hump, but said he was feeling fine. He cleared his throat. Helene couldn’t help wondering whether the splinter in his back might have injured his lungs and that was the reason for the constant throat-clearing. Over the past few months, said the guest happily, he had written so many poems that he now had enough to put together in a seven-volume edition of his complete works. He deliberately ignored the fact that his old friend couldn’t answer him, for after the latest injection given to the invalid by his tall and beautiful daughter, his mouth seemed too dry to speak.
Although Martha told Helene to go downstairs and help Mariechen to stone, gently heat and bottle plums, she stayed where she was. The winy aroma of the plums rose to the top storey of the house, getting into every nook and cranny, and clinging to Helene’s hair. She leaned back. She had no intention of leaving the visitor alone with her father and her sister Martha.
How nice that we have time for a good chat at last, said Grumbach, probably appreciating his friend’s customary silence.
Helene looked at the walking stick. Its finely carved ivory handle was in curious contrast to the three little plaques he had screwed to the stick itself. One of them was in several colours, one gold and one silver. At a distance, Helene could not make out what was embossed on them. The further carving at the lower end of the stick showed that it must once have been shortened above the metal tip. Very likely Grumbach had owned that stick for years and years, and after the war its original length had had to be adjusted.
The visitor never took his eyes off Martha as she reached up to open the top of the window. You remember me, don’t you? Old Uncle Gustav? Uncle Gusti? said the visitor, looking Martha’s way, and he must have been glad of her kind smile, which might mean anything, either that yes, she did remember him or that she was pleased to see him again.
Grumbach had settled into the wing chair near his friend’s bed, but he could sit there only if he stooped over. He was sucking his sugar lump to the accompaniment of the familiar throat-clearing and a slight smacking of his lips. Such a big lump of sugar called for good strong teeth, but since his third back molar had recently broken he preferred to suck it.
Uncle Gustav, whispered Helene to Martha at the next opportunity, she couldn’t help giggling. The attempt at familiarity and the term Uncle that he used to convey it struck Helene as so outlandish that, in spite of Uncle Gustav’s obvious frailty, she was on the verge of laughter. The silence was punctuated by his slurping tea with his mouth half open. Helene couldn’t take her eyes off him. She saw his gaze wandering over Martha as if their hospitality gave him licence to stare openly at her. At her shining hair pinned up on top of her head, her long white neck, her slender waist, and most of all at what lay below the waist. To all appearances, the sight made Uncle Gustav feel proud and happy. Until a few days ago he had been permitted only to watch Martha from afar; now he felt really close to her at last. Like most of the men who lived near the printing works, he had watched her growing up with a strangely mingled sense of amazement and desire, the latter suppressed only with difficulty. Grumbach made sure that her other admirers remained at a suitable distance, keeping as beady an eye on them as they did on him. Seeing his old friend at home again gladdened his heart no less than the chance it gave him of gaining access to the house and the company of his friend’s daughters. As the guest now watched Martha carefully cleaning the hypodermic needle, turning her back to him, busying herself at the washstand with cloths and essences to help the wound to heal, it was easy to let his walking stick and the hand resting on it move a few centimetres sideways, so that next time Martha turned he could feel the rough fabric of her apron on the back of his hand. That slender waist and what lay just below it. Obviously Martha didn’t even notice the touch; the folds of her dress and apron were too thick; she kept moving this way and that near the washstand. With sly glee the guest relished the way her movements stroked the back of his hand.
Helene watched Uncle Gustav widen his nostrils and sniff. She felt sure that nothing escaped him, that he noticed the aroma of coffee in the air, and while Martha’s involuntary stroking excited him, he might be wondering whether to ask Helene to bring him a cup. He enjoyed sending his friend’s two daughters around the house in search of this and that. Although Martha had warned him not to smoke when he was with her father, he had asked her to bring first an ashtray for his pipe, then a glass of wine, and later he had not turned down the porridge that Helene had made for her father, although Father could eat hardly any of it.
What smelled so good, Grumbach wanted to know every day as he arrived at the house around noon, as if by chance. Rhubarb pudding, a casserole of beans baked with caraway, mashed potatoes with nutmeg. Grumbach said he hadn’t had a watch since the war, adding that without a wife or children you could easily lose track of the time of day. So it was all the more surprising that he came to visit just in time for the midday meal.
When Martha and Helene had helped him to some of everything, hoping he would feel well fed and go away again, Grumbach just stayed put in his chair, cheerfully rocking back and forth, and making himself at home. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, he would unstrap his wooden arm and hand it to Helene to be put in the corner.
How wonderful to see everything growing and flourishing, said the visitor, as his eyes caressed Martha’s back. When she made her father’s bed, bending far over it, her apron parted slightly at the back to show the dress underneath. It seemed to the man that she was bending over just for him.
All gone to rack and ruin, said Helene’s father, blinking.
What, Father? What’s gone to rack and ruin? Martha was at the washstand again, and the guest in the wing chair was getting the back of his hand stroked by her apron.
The house, just look at the paint peeling, flakes of coloured paint everywhere, big ones.
It was true that little had been done to maintain the house in the years of his absence. No one had bothered about the paint, which was fading up here under the roof and peeling off the wall like dead skin.
Grumbach was not to be distracted from his silent lust by his friend, the girls’ father, deploring the state of the house. The touch of Martha’s dress seemed to him too sweet for that. Only when Helene stood up did Martha turn to face them. Her slightly flushed cheeks were shining, her little dimples looked enchanting. The innocence that the guest could read in her wide eyes might make him feel some shame. Helene hoped so.
Can I help you? Helene asked Martha, with a sharp glance at the guest who liked to be called Uncle Gustav.
Martha shook her head. Helene squeezed past Martha and the visitor, and knelt at the head of the bed.
Are you awake? Helene whispered to her father. Since his return she had felt she must speak to him formally. He lacked the ability to overcome the reserve between them in words or by showing her any attention.
Father, it’s me. Your little girl. Your golden girl.
Helene took her father’s hand in hers and kissed it. I’m sure you wonder what we were doing all the time you were away. Her tone was imploring. She wasn’t sure whether her father heard what she was saying. We went to school. Martha taught me to play piano studies: Desolation and then the Well-Tempered Klavier, Father. I’m afraid I don’t have the patience to play the piano. And three years or more ago we went to the railway station with Arthur Cohen and his baggage to see him off. Did Martha tell you about that? But just think, Arthur couldn’t join up to fight in the war. They didn’t want him.
A Jew, said Grumbach, interrupting Helene’s whispering. He leaned back in the wing chair and added, with a derisive click of his tongue, who’d want the likes of him?
Helene half turned to him, just far enough for him to have to see her gaze fixed on the back of his hand as it touched Martha’s dress, and narrowed her eyes. The guest breathed heavily, but he left his hand where it was, on Martha’s apron. Helene supposed he saw that as his due reward for saying no more. She turned back to her father, kissed the palm of his hand, his forefinger, each finger separately, and went on.
When Arthur reported for military service, they said they couldn’t call him up without proof of his residence in Bautzen and they wouldn’t send him to any regiment. Arthur objected, until they finally gave him a medical and told him he had rickets, he’d be no use in the war. He’d better go to Heidelberg and study there, they said, if he had the money and recommendations he’d need. In case of doubt, a young doctor would be more use than a soldier with rickets.
Helene’s father cleared his throat. She went on.
You remember him, don’t you? Arthur Cohen, the wigmaker’s nephew. He went to school here in Bautzen; his uncle paid the fees. He was a good student.
Her father began coughing harder, and Martha glanced up from what she was doing at the washstand to look sternly at Helene. Her expression showed that she was afraid her relationship with Arthur Cohen might come to light. She didn’t want either her father or his guest to know about those walks by the Spree; she didn’t want anyone to know.
So now he’s studying in Heidelberg. Helene paused, took a deep breath; it wasn’t easy for her to utter the word Heidelberg and the explanation: Botany, that’s what he’s studying. And he sent us a letter, he wrote saying that there are women studying medicine in Heidelberg.
Now her father coughed so noisily that Helene’s words were lost, although she had taken great trouble to raise her voice. What else could she say to her father about Heidelberg and studying there? What would fire him with enthusiasm? She hesitated, but next moment he vomited as he coughed. Helene flinched back, taking the visitor’s walking stick with her. If she hadn’t clutched Martha’s dress, and then pushed herself off from the guest’s knees as he sat behind her, she would probably have stumbled and fallen straight on top of him. Since he stooped in the chair, she could easily have fallen on his head and shoulder.
As it was, Helene landed on the floor. Her eyes fell on the badges adorning Grumbach’s walking stick. The civic emblems of Weimar, Cassel, Bad Wildungen. Helene rose to her feet and handed back the stick.
Their guest shook his head. He got up too, took his wooden arm off the bed and placed himself beside Martha. He whispered, loud enough for Helene to hear him: I’m going to ask for your hand in marriage.
No, you are not. There was more contempt than fear in Martha’s voice.
Yes, I am, said their guest. Then he hurried downstairs and out of the door.
Martha and Helene washed their father. Martha showed Helene how to change the compresses on the stump of the leg and what proportion of morphine to add to the injection. She must go carefully, because the last dose wasn’t long ago. Under Martha’s watchful eye, Helene gave her father an injection, the first she had ever given anyone. She was pleased to see the relaxed smile that appeared on his face a little later, a smile that must be meant for her.
Next day, around noon, Grumbach knocked on his friend’s door again. Mariechen opened it. It had been snowing over the Lusatian Hills all night, and when she opened the door the light coming in from the street was so dazzling that Mariechen blinked. Snowflakes lay on the visitor’s hair. He was obviously wearing his best suit. He held not just his stick in his one hand, but also a little basket of walnuts, and they too wore little caps of snow.
Ah, whenever I come visiting there’s such a wonderful aroma in this house, said the uninvited guest. He stamped his feet to get the snow off his shoes. Mariechen stood in the doorway as if she wasn’t sure how far in the visitor could be allowed. Grumbach looked through the open door and spotted the dining table in the parlour. Three full plates stood on it. The guest made his way past Mariechen and into the house. There was a smell of beetroot in the air. Soup spoons lay in the steaming plates as if the company had had to jump up in a hurry and leave the table. The vacated chairs stood a little way apart. While the visitor ceremoniously removed his boots, he ventured a second inquisitive glance at the dining room. Mariechen lowered her eyes, for bumping and clattering sounds were coming from the floor above. Suddenly Selma Würsich’s voice rang out loud and clear.
Your father needs looking after? This was followed by a malicious cackle of laughter. Do you know what looking after someone means? Acting so sweet, and you don’t even fetch a glass of water for your mother! Another bumping sound. Your mother, do you hear? Just you wait, you’ll have to look after me one of these days. Aha. Me, do you hear? Until I die. You’ll have to take my excrement in your hands.
The cackle of laughter died away, changed and turned to sobbing.
Let’s see what’s going on, said the guest, climbing the stairs with determination ahead of Mariechen.
As he reached the top step, a boot flew just past his face and hit the wall. Helene had ducked, so her mother took the second boot and threw that at her too, with all her might.
You brat, you little tick, you’ll be the death of me yet!
Helene put her arms over her head for protection. Her answer came soft but clear: I wouldn’t do you the favour.
No one had noticed the advent of the visitor. He could hardly believe his eyes. If Mariechen had not followed him upstairs, close on his heels, and if she hadn’t been standing behind him now and barring his way down, he would have turned to beat a retreat unseen. There stood Frau Selma in her nightdress, which was cut so low that it showed more of her breasts than surely she could like. Embroidered marguerite daisies ran along the lace edge. But her loose hair swirled in the air and fell in ringlets to her bare shoulders as if it were alive. The silver threads in it gleamed, winding over her breasts like worm trails. Obviously she hadn’t been expecting a visitor, and she still didn’t see him as he stood hesitantly on the top step but one, looking for a way out.
You shameless, spoilt brat!
So who brought me up, Mother?
And to think I’ve been feeding such a child in my house. Her mother snorted. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?
Martha feeds us, Mother, haven’t you noticed? Helene’s voice was level but challenging. Maybe I write the red and black figures in the printing works accounts books for you, but it’s Martha who feeds us. Whose money do you think we use to pay for goods at the market on Saturday? Yours? Do you have any money?
Oh, you little devil, get away from here, clear out! Mother snatched a book from the shelf and flung it in Helene’s direction.
Heavens above. Helene kept her voice low. Why did you give birth to me, Mother? Why did you do it? Why not abort me and send me off to join the angels?
Before the guest could dodge, another book ricocheted off his shoulder.
Don’t say you didn’t know how!
Only now did Selma Würsich notice their visitor. Tears flowed from her eyes, she sank to her knees and said to the guest, in a pleading tone: Did you hear that, sir? Help me! And she calls herself my daughter! She was sobbing uncontrollably.
Excuse me, please. The guest was stammering. He stood hesitantly on the stairs, leaning on his stick with his one hand: Weimar, Cassel, Bad Wildungen, where are you now? He was trembling as he leaned against the banisters for support.
Oh yes, she calls herself my daughter! Mother was shouting now; she wanted the whole town, the entire human race, to hear about her misfortune. It was her soul wanted to come to me, she was the one who chose me.
Helene did not deign to glance at the guest. She murmured quietly: Wanting never came into it.
She straightened up, tidied her hair, and went purposefully upstairs to her father, who was lying there on the right-hand side of the marital bed and did indeed need her care and help. Even before the guest could follow her up, probably assuming that he would find Martha, his old friend’s wife was barring his way. She seized hold of his leg, clasped it in both her hands, she groaned, she whimpered. The visitor turned, looking for Mariechen, but Mariechen had disappeared. He was alone with the foreign woman.
Upstairs, Helene tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. So she sat on the top step in the dark and, unseen, looked down at her mother through the banisters. She was clutching Grumbach’s leg and crawling over the floor at the same time. Grumbach was trying to free himself, but in vain.
Did you see that? Her nails were clawing at Grumbach’s ankles.
Excuse me, repeated the visitor, er, please excuse me. Can I help you up?
At least there’s one person in this house who has a heart. Helene’s mother gave the visitor her hand, hauled herself up heavily, and was finally supporting herself on him and his stick with her bare arms, making him totter. His glance fell on her bosom, moved on to the delicate daisy embroidery, then returned to the locks of dark and silver ringlets falling over her breasts. Finally he tore his eyes away and, with an effort, fixed them on the floor.
As soon as she was upright again she looked down at the stooping man in front of her.
Who are you? she asked in surprise. She pushed back her hair from her face, still ignoring her deep décolleté. Suspiciously, she looked at the man. Do I know you? What are you doing in my house?
Grumbach is my name, Gustav Grumbach. Your husband printed my poems To the Fair One. Grumbach cleared his throat, trying to summon up a trusting smile out of the confusion of the moment.
To the Fair One? The girls’ mother broke into a peal of laughter.
The change from heart-rending tears to loud laughter was so sudden that it sent a shiver running down the visitor’s spine. Perhaps his heart was thudding; at least, he dared not look the woman in the eye. In fact, he didn’t know where to look at all, since he could hardly consider it proper for his eyes to rest on the tiny breasts showing above her nightdress either. For over twenty years he had known Selma Würsich only at a distance. In the past she used to stand behind the wooden counter in the printing works now and then; he must have spoken to her a few times, he just couldn’t remember it at the moment. She had retreated from the life of Bautzen over the years and had been forgotten, had to be forgotten.
Since his return from Verdun, Grumbach had seen her only once, again from a distance. If it had been her. The people of the town said there was something wrong with her. Gustav Grumbach should have felt all the more relieved that the foreign woman had never crossed his path since he began visiting the Würsich household.
To the Fair One? Selma Würsich had assumed a serious expression. She made it a question, and kept hold of the visitor’s shoulder. And who is this Fair One? Who is she supposed to be? While she was still asking, she seemed to be searching for something; she felt in her dressing gown pocket and looked uneasily over the guest’s shoulders. Cigarette? she asked, putting out her hand for a packet standing within reach on the narrow bookshelf.
No, thank you.
Selma Würsich lit one of the slender cigarettes and inhaled deeply. So do you know who this Fair One is? I assume you have someone special in mind, am I right? You know Daumer’s poem, I take it? Waft, ye zephyrs, soft and sweetly. Selma’s voice was hoarse. Waft! she said in a deep and menacing tone. Waft! She laughed, and the cackle hurt Helene, who put both hands over her ears.
Tentatively, Selma Würsich inhaled the smoke of her cigarette and let it out through her nostrils in tiny, cloudy puffs.
Grumbach managed to get out the words: Yes, of course.
This was more of an assertion than anything else, or so at least Helene interpreted the pressure she detected behind the sounds he uttered and his restless eyes.
If thou thine heart wouldst give me . . . Her mother began the line in a voice laden with meaning.
. . . then secret let it be./That others may not guess it when they see you with me. Oh yes, of course, that too, said the guest, making haste to complete the couplet. But he seemed unable to summon up much real pleasure in their complicity.
But have you thought what craftiness lies behind that vow of love? No? Yes? What a polemic! I’ll tell you: he wants her to keep her mouth shut so that he’s the only one with any say about their being a couple. And she’s not happy about it. Did you understand that? I mean, it’s monstrous. The reader can but weep to see her words so obviously dismissed, to see him reject her. At least, a woman reader must, she whispered barely audibly, adding out loud: But I don’t see you shedding any tears. You want to triumph over her. To the Fair One! I ask you!
Once again Helene heard her mother’s malicious laughter. A guest like this would have difficulty understanding the depths below it.
As for Heine, the likes of you ought not even to read him. Do you hear me? You betray him rather than understanding him. Oh, you still read him, do you? Are you in your right mind?
One ought not to read him?
Not you. You and your misunderstandings, what a gang! To the Fair One. You know, it won’t do. It’s not simply bad, it is wicked, wicked.
Please be gracious enough to forgive me, madam. The guest was stammering now.
But Helene’s mother seemed to find forgiving difficult.
Gracious? There’s no grace among mankind. Grace is not our business.
Forgive me, dear lady. Perhaps you are right and I’ve just been talking hot air. Forget it, dear Frau Würsich. It’s not worth discussing.
Talking hot air? Listen, Grumbach, talk as much hot air as you like, but spare your fellow men yourself and your nonsense! You must seek true grace and forgiveness only from your God, sir. Helene’s mother had been regaining control of herself, and spoke those last few words with stern clarity.
I really would like to ask you, Grumbach began.
To the Fair One! And again Helene heard her mother’s laughter, the laughter with depths that a guest like this could never guess at, could never plumb, which was just as well.
Helene’s mother offered the guest the remains of her cigarette.
So now, sir, take this outside with you. You’d like to ask me? No beggars here, no hawkers, no itinerant musicians . . . you’ll forgive me.
From her safe retreat in the darkness above, Helene saw the guest nod. He took the glowing cigarette, which must be burning close to his fingers. As her mother withdrew into her bedroom, coughing, and closed the door, the guest nodded. Carefully, stick and glowing cigarette in his hand, he climbed down the steep stairs. He was still nodding as he reached the front door and went out into Tuchmacherstrasse. The door latched behind him.
Helene stood up and tried to open her father’s door again. She shook it.
Let me in, it’s me.
At first all was still behind the door, but then Helene heard Martha’s light footsteps inside.
Why didn’t you open the door?
I didn’t want him to hear her.
Why not?
He’s forgotten her. Have you noticed that he hasn’t asked about her these last few weeks? I couldn’t tell him she’s living on the floor just below and simply doesn’t want to see him.
Martha took Helene’s hand and drew her over to their father’s bed.
How relaxed he looks, Helene remarked.
Martha said nothing.
Don’t you think he looks relaxed?
Martha still did not answer and Helene thought he must be glad to have a daughter like her, a nurse who not only dressed the inflamed stump of his left leg daily, but injected him with painkillers and was careful, day after day, to talk herself and him out of the fear that he might have typhoid. Their father could not keep down any fluids now, but there were several possible reasons for that, which Martha hastily listed, while Helene read medical manuals, allegedly to prepare herself for training as a nurse, in fact so as not to lose sight entirely of her wish to study medicine.
Helene sat down on the chair and, when Martha set about washing their father’s yellow foot, she took the top book off the pile lying beside her. She glanced up only now and then, to suggest that her father’s steadily rising temperature might be a symptom of typhoid after all, developing after some delay.
Martha said nothing to that. It had not escaped her that their father’s condition had deteriorated considerably. But she said: You don’t understand anything about it yet.
Over the last few weeks, Martha had shown Helene how to do everything she did. They handled their father’s body in turn as he lay there, looking so defenceless, Helene thought. There was nothing he could do but suffer his daughters’ hands on his body. They were not caressing him lovingly but exploring his body as if to find out something and as if, when they did, it would do them some good. Martha told Helene where every organ was, although Helene had known all that for a long time. Martha couldn’t help noticing how his spleen was swelling by the day; she must know what that meant.
For some time now, Martha had been unable to go to the hospital in the morning. She stayed at home, watching over her father’s life, easing it for him. Helene noticed that Martha was scraping and scrubbing herself more frequently every day. After each visit to her father’s bedside Martha scraped at her hands thoroughly, right up to the elbows; she called in the aid of the hairbrush and openly scrubbed her back with it.
At first she asked Helene to empty the bedpan with some hesitation, but then they came to take it for granted that Helene would carry the bedpans of fluids out of the room, rinse them with boiling water and clean the thermometer. Helene washed her hands and her arms up to the elbows, she scrubbed her fingers and the palms and backs of her hands with the nailbrush. It was not supposed to itch, it mustn’t itch. Cold water on her wrists, soap, plenty of soap, which had to foam into a lather. It didn’t itch, she just had to wash herself. Helene conscientiously entered the temperature from the thermometer on the curve of the chart recording it. Martha watched her.
You know what it means when the spleen swells, said Helene. Martha didn’t look at her. Helene wanted to help Martha, she wanted at least to take her father’s pulse, but Martha pushed her away from the bed and the sick man in it.
One evening the sweetish smell met Helene on her way upstairs. The stench of rotting almost took her breath away. She opened the window; the smell of damp leaves rose to her nostrils. A cool October day was drawing to its close. The wind blew through the elms. Her father wouldn’t open his one eye any more. He was breathing through his mouth, which was wide open.
Not without her. Martha was standing beside Helene. She reached for her hand, squeezed her little sister’s hand so hard that it hurt them both, and repeated what she had said. Not without her here.
Martha left the room, determined to break down the door to her mother’s bedroom by force if necessary.
This was the first time for days that Helene had been alone with her father. She carefully kept her breathing shallow and went over to his bed. His hand was heavy, the skin roughened. When Helene picked up that yellow skin in two fingers it did not drop back into place again. Helene was not surprised when, in the light of the lamp, she saw the red rash on his chest where his nightshirt opened. Her father’s hand was pleasantly warm, his temperature had risen daily by tenths of a degree until it reached forty.
From below, she heard clattering and furious shouts. No one was supposed to disturb Mother. Helene changed the sheet that they were using instead of a blanket, now that their father was so hot inside. Her glance went instinctively to the festering stump. Its sweet smell had enticed maggots out. She didn’t want to look; it was as if his wound were alive, as if death were licking its way towards it. Helene swallowed as she uncovered his genitals – they looked to her small and dried-up, as if they had withered away and just happened to be lying where they were by chance. The instrument of her conception. Helene laid her hand on her father’s forehead; she bent over him.
She didn’t even whisper the words: I love you. Her lips formed them, that was all, as she kissed his forehead.
Hoar frost, only a small one. My little pigeon. We’re not freezing any more, her father stammered. He hadn’t spoken for weeks. She hardly recognized his voice, but it must be his. Helene stayed with him, she touched his forehead with her lips and stayed there. Her head suddenly felt so heavy that she wanted to lay her face on her father’s. She knew that her father had always called her mother his little pigeon.
The body is only a disguise, her father whispered. That’s all, and invisible. It’s warm inside the house, come in to me, little pigeon, no one can find us, no one can scare us. Father put his hands to his ears and held them there. Stay with me, my words, don’t run out. My pigeon is coming, my little pigeon is coming.
For a moment Helene was ashamed; she had heard the words spoken to her mother, or at least meant for her mother, and would be keeping them to herself.
Only when the shivering began did Helene stand up. She caressed her father’s head. Countless numbers of his hairs, grown long now, stuck to her hand. So many hairs sticking to Helene’s hand. Full of surprise, she wondered how he could still have any left on his head. What had begun as shivering became more violent; her father’s body was shaking, spittle flowed from the corner of his mouth. Helene expected him to turn blue as she had seen him do a few days ago. She said: It’s me, Helene.
But through his shivering, his words sounded unnaturally clear. Such a sweet smile, you have. We two together. Only the shells explode and give us away, they’re so loud and we are so soft. Too soft. It’s spurting, take care!
Helene took a step back to avoid her father’s fist as it lashed out.
Father, would you like something to drink?
A legbone, a legbone, a legbone dancing on its own. Her father laughed and with his laughter the shivering died down. Ripples moving away from their point of origin. Helene was not sure whether he was talking about his lost leg.
Something to drink?
Suddenly her father’s hand shot out, unexpectedly strong, to seize Helene and hold her firmly by the wrist.
Helene was alarmed. She turned, but there was no sign of Martha coming back. Indistinct sounds from the floor below showed that she and Mariechen had managed to get into the room, that was all. Helene twisted out of her father’s grasp, and next moment he seemed to fall asleep. She took the carafe of water from the bedside table and poured some of it into the little bottle that Martha had been using for the last few days to get liquid into her father’s mouth.
As soon as she put the little bottle to his lips he said, still in the position of a sleeping man: Drunken women in my mouth.
He couldn’t drink, couldn’t take any more water. Helene moistened her father’s lips with her fingers. She resorted to the syringe for aid, taking out the needle and dripping water into his mouth from it.
Then she replaced the needle and filled the syringe with morphine to the lowest mark, held it up and expelled the air. Her father’s arm was covered with puncture marks, so she looked for somewhere on his neck. An abscess had formed there, but next to it she found a good place for the injection. She pressed down slowly.
Later, she must have fallen asleep at his bedside from exhaustion. Twilight was falling as she raised her head and heard her mother cursing as she approached. Obviously she was being forcibly brought upstairs. Martha’s voice was heard, loud and determined: You must see him, Mother.
The door was opened, their mother was resisting, she didn’t want to enter the room.
I won’t, Mother kept saying again and again, I won’t. She hit out. But Martha and Mariechen were having none of that; they propelled her to the door and then, now that she was clinging firmly to them both, hauled her over to Father’s bed with all their strength.
There was a moment’s silence. Mother stood up straight. She saw her husband, the man she hadn’t seen for six years. She closed her eyes.
Just what did he do to you? Martha asked her, breaking the silence and unable to hide her indignation. For the first time in her life, Helene heard Mariechen speaking her own Sorbian language, a soft sing-song. She was familiar with its rhythm from the women in the market place. Mariechen folded her hands, clearly in prayer.
Ignoring that, Mother groped her way towards the bed like a blind puppy, a creature that doesn’t yet know its way but is instinctively getting the hang of it. She took hold of Father’s sheet and bent over the sick man. When he opened his sound eye, she whispered, with a tenderness that frightened Helene: Just say you’re still alive.
Her head sank on Father’s chest and Helene was sure that now she would shed tears. But she stayed where she was, motionless and still.
My little pigeon, said Father, laboriously searching for words. I didn’t give you a room in my house just for you to shut yourself up in it.
Mother withdrew from him.
Yes, you did, she said quietly. All the things in my room, all the hills and valleys they make, that’s where I’m at home. Nowhere else. They are me. Who knows what care I put into laying out my paths? Clearings. Your daughters wanted to throw away the Bautzen News, tidying up they call it. They tore away the chiffon as if it wasn’t hiding anything, they took last December’s editions apart, I worked for days stacking them up again. By subject. According to subject, theme, material, putting them together, stacking them, putting them in order that way, not by the date. I’m a nocturnal creature. It’s dark in me, but never dark enough.
Helene glanced at Martha, looking across the bed and over her parents’ heads. They were so preoccupied with each other that Helene felt as if she were at the theatre. Perhaps Martha was thinking the same. Mother’s heart has gone blind, Martha had once said when Helene asked what was wrong with her. She can only see things, not people any more, that’s why she collects those old pots and pans, scarves with holes in them and common-or-garden fruit stones. You never knew when this or that might come in useful. Only the other day she’d been sewing a peach stone to her woollen cape. Mother could see a horse in a piece of bent tree root and would tie a tail of hair recently cut from one of her daughters’ heads to the back of it. She had drawn a strand of wool through the hole in an enamel dish which said SOAP on it in large letters, and tied assorted buttons and pebbles collected over the years to the strand. This soap dish now hung over her bedroom door to act as a bell, so that she would have warning, even in a drowsy state, if anyone came in. Helene remembered a walk many years ago, perhaps their last outing together before Father left for the war. Mother had gone on this walk with her family only with reluctance and after repeated requests from her husband. She had suddenly bent down, picked up a curved piece of iron from the rim of a cartwheel and cried happily: Eureka! She recognized the earth in the iron and the fire in the shape of it, picked it up, held it in the air and took it home, where she found it a new function as a shoehorn, discerning a soul in the thing. She talked a soul into it, gave it a soul, so to speak. Mother in the role of God. Everything was to have its being through her alone. Eureka: Helene often wondered about the meaning of the word. But her mother could no longer recognize her younger daughter, her heart had gone blind, as Martha said, so that she couldn’t see people any more. She could tolerate only those whom she had met before the death of her four sons.
Helene looked at her mother, who described herself as a nocturnal creature, pointing out the attention she paid to the existence of her paths and clearings, making all these confessions like a brilliant actress. Malice had become second nature to her: it was the effect that counted. But Helene could be wrong. The appearance of malice was Mother’s only possible armour, malicious words her weapons, in her triumph over what had once bound the couple together as man and wife. Something about this woman appeared to Helene so immeasurably false, concentrating as she did so mercilessly on herself, without the faintest trace of love or even a glance for her father, that she could not help hating her mother.
Father moved his mouth, struggling with a jaw that wouldn’t obey him. Then he said distinctly: I wanted to see you, my little pigeon. I’m back because of you.
You never should have gone.
There was no grief left in Mother’s voice; all the grief had frozen into certainty. Your daughters wanted to get rid of my books, but I saved a quotation for you, one of my favourites, to console me for your absence.
I’m glad you had consolation. Father’s voice was faint and free of any mockery.
It’s from Machiavelli, I expect you remember him? The first law for every creature is: Preserve yourself! Live! You sow hemlock and act as if you saw ears of corn ripening!
I’ve lost my leg, look, I’ll be staying here now. Father tried to force a smile, a kind one. An understanding, gentle smile. The kind with which he could once smooth over any disagreement between them.
It would never have been lost here, not here with me.
Father did not reply. Helene felt a strong wish to defend him; she wanted to say something to justify his leaving six years ago, but nothing occurred to her. So she said: Mother, he went to the war for all of us, he lost his leg for all our sakes.
No, said Mother, shaking her head. Not for me.
She rose to her feet.
She walked out of the door, turning back once, without a glance for Helene as she told her: And you keep out of this, child. What do you know about me and him?
Martha followed their mother to the stairs, undaunted and unimpressed.
Then her mother, whose heart had gone blind, of whom Helene knew nothing much but the orders she gave and the thoughts that cut her off from the world, went back to her dying husband, knowing that her daughters were there behind her, yet still she said: This isn’t the first time I’ve been dying.
Helene took Martha’s hand; she almost laughed. She had so often heard her mother say that! Usually it led to demands for them to do more housework, show greater respect, or run an errand; sometimes it was a mere explanation, although its intention was not easy to decipher and its purpose could keep the girls guessing for hours on end. But here at her husband’s deathbed, obviously nothing meant anything to their mother but her own emotion, the darker side of feelings that were sufficient only for herself.
Martha removed her hand from Helene’s. She took her mother by the shoulder. Can’t you see he’s the one who’s dying? Father is dying. Not you. Can’t you finally understand that this is not about your death?
It’s not? Mother looked at Martha in surprise.
No. Martha shook her head as if she had to convince her mother.
Mother’s baffled gaze suddenly fell on Helene. A smile came to her lips, as if she were setting eyes on someone she hadn’t seen for a long time. Come here, my daughter, she said to Helene.
Helene dared not move. She didn’t want to get an inch closer to her mother, not the smallest step. She would have liked to leave the room. She was avoiding not so much the threat of her mother’s imminent rejection as her touch, as if that touch might carry some kind of infection. Helene felt her old fear that some day her heart might go as blind as her mother’s. Mother’s smile, still confident a moment ago, froze. Helene had a recurrent nightmare that had tormented her for years, about two gods who looked like Apollo in the engraving hanging over the shelf for paper in the sales room of the printing works. The two gods who resembled Apollo were arguing, each claiming his sole right at the top of his voice: Me, me! I am the Lord thy God, they both cried at the same time. And everything went dark around Helene. So dark that she couldn’t see anything any more. In this dream she groped her way forward, she felt something slippery as slugs, felt heat, fire and finally she fell into a void. Before she could hit the bottom of the abyss, she always woke up with her heart racing, pressed her nose to Martha’s back as her sister lay breathing regularly, and while her nightdress stuck to her back, cold and clammy, she prayed to God to free her from the nightmare. But God was obviously angry. The nightmare came back again. Perhaps his feelings were hurt, and Helene knew why: he guessed that she was thinking of him in a certain shape, as the figure of a stately Apollo, and not only that, she saw him double, she saw his brother, and while she prayed to one she turned her back on the other – and in the end her prayer itself left no god any choice but anger.
Next moment, as she stood there frozen rigid, when it had become clear that she would not and could not do as her mother asked, she remembered how her mother had talked, years ago on the Protschenberg, about her God and Father’s God, as if their faiths were rivals. When Mother described human beings as earthworms, Helene took it as an expression of the hatred that Mother had always tried imparting to her, and it bore fruit when Helene dreamed of slugs and fell into a void that appeared to her like her mother’s womb.
Helene wanted to wash, wash her hands up to the elbows, her neck, her hair. She must wash everything. Her thoughts were going round and round. She turned away and stumbled down the stairs. She heard Mariechen calling after her, she heard Martha calling her name, but she couldn’t think, couldn’t stop, she had to run. She opened the front door of the house and ran up Tuchmacherstrasse and over the Lauengraben to the bridge, to Kronprinzenbrücke. Then she made her way further, on tiptoe in the dark, below the Bürgergarten and down the slope of the bank to the River Spree. Sometimes she could cling to the stout foundations of the bridge with her hands, sometimes she held on to trees and bushes. She went along the lower road to the Lattenzaun, past the Hop Flower restaurant, where there was still lively company and loud dance music. People wanted to be done with the war and silence and defeat at last. Only when she came to the weir, and heard nothing in the darkness but the gurgling and rushing of the river, was she able to stop. Crouching down, she held her hands in the icy water. Mist hung low over the river, and Helene listened to her breath as it calmed down.
It was late when the music from the restaurant had stopped, and her clothes were damp and cold from the night air and the river, and she went home. On tiptoe, she went up to her dark bedroom, felt around for Martha and slipped into bed with her under the blanket. Martha put an arm over her and a leg, her long, heavy leg, and under it Helene felt safe.