Broken Glass Park (14 page)

“Her husband was a rotten man,” I continue. “The woman kept wanting to leave him. But he always hemmed and hawed about how she couldn’t leave him. She probably thought he’d have a complete breakdown at some point. Or perhaps she wanted to have a breakdown herself instead. The man was short-tempered and jealous, and he shouted at her a lot and sometimes hit her.

“One day the whole family moved to another kingdom. The spell was broken. She managed to kick the asshole out. He was absolutely irate, hit rock bottom, and so forth. But she left him anyway.

“He settled down a little. He regularly visited his old family, as he called them, especially his two sweet kids. He didn’t get along well with the older daughter, who wasn’t his. She had always hated him and he knew it. He was also afraid of her. He knew that if he so much as laid a hand on her, on either of his kids, or on the woman, the older daughter would go straight to the cops.

“One day the woman met a prince. But he was disguised and nobody realized he was a prince. She was happy for a while, and so were her children. He really was a prince. When he was around, everything was good.

“But the ex-husband wasn’t happy about this. He saw how well his old family was doing without him. And he saw that his former children loved the prince, too. He was worried they would realize what an asshole their father really was. He wanted to stop this from happening. He wanted to do something about it and came up with a plan.

“He bought candy for the kids. He went to see his old family and none of them realized that on this day he had a pistol beneath his jacket. He gave the kids the chocolate. The woman was home, too. Along with her prince. And the man began to curse them out—until they asked him to leave.

“And he left. But he didn’t go far. Instead he turned around. He rang the doorbell. The woman let him back in. The older daughter arrived home just then, too.

“‘What do you want now?’ she asked. ‘Come back when you’ve calmed down.’

“That’s when he lifted the pistol and fired it. Once, twice, three times, four.

“The older daughter began to scream. She screamed so loud that one of the windowpanes shattered. She tried to prop up her mother, but she weighed too much and was limp and lying in a pool of blood. Then the daughter jumped on the man with the pistol in his hand. She punched him and even managed to break his nose.

“She still doesn’t know to this day why he didn’t shoot her.

“He threw her to the floor and snarled, ‘Where is he?’ He meant the prince, who was sitting in the kitchen with the children. The prince came running out, shaking with fear and horror. The children came running, too, and saw their mother and began to scream. The man lifted the pistol again and the prince attempted to save himself, running into the bedroom. He closed the door behind him but the man shot through the door.

“The older daughter ran out of the apartment with the other two children and rang the neighbor’s doorbell. From the hall they heard two more shots. The neighbor jerked the children inside and slammed the door shut again.

“Soon the man with the pistol came out of the apartment and also rang the neighbors’ doorbell. But they wouldn’t let him in. The man said to call the police. Which was exactly what they were already thinking.

“The man waited on the stairs until he was arrested. He gave up the pistol without any protest and confessed. In court he said his wife had annoyed him forever.

“Felix, are you asleep?”

I run my hand along the goosebumps on his forearms. He doesn’t say a word. His breathing is silent. Maybe he’s holding his breath.

“Were you even listening?”

“Where’s your father?” he asks suddenly, startling me.

“Don’t know. Maybe here somewhere.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know anything about him. I don’t want to know. My mother tried to talk about him a few times, but I always stopped her.”

“I don’t understand,” he whispers in my ear.

“Little Felix,” I say, “how could you possibly understand? He didn’t want me to be born. That’s the only thing my mother ever got out before I shut her up once and for all. He wanted my mother to have an abortion. And he gave her quite a bit of money so she could have it done privately at a doctor’s office instead of at one of those clinics where women were practically put on an assembly line and not given any anesthesia. My mother always said he was a respectable man who was able to set up a respectable abortion for his girlfriend—she said that again and again, only half-joking. She went to the doctor’s office and was told to undress. Then she thought—or at least she says she did—‘But I want to have a little girl, and I want to call her Sascha, and I’m not going to end this life, this thing’s alive no matter what this man says. I want to have it.’ So she got dressed again, took the envelope of money back, and walked out. The doctor thought she’d gone crazy. My mother ran the whole way home because she thought the doctor would come after her. She never wanted to see the man who had impregnated her again because she was afraid he might try to induce an abortion by violent means. There had been a few recent cases like that. At first she was going to give him back the money, but then she bought baby things with it instead.

“That’s why I don’t want to know his name. He’s not even on my birth certificate. There’s nobody to ask, either, now that my mother is dead. He could have won the Nobel Prize for all I know.

“But I don’t care. What do you think, Felix?”

He doesn’t answer. He’s very quiet. There’s just a soft whistling sound in my ear. I’m not sure what it is. Could be from a mobile phone somewhere, I think.

Then I fall asleep.

I wake up in the middle of the night.

I can’t understand what’s happening. Felix is lying next to me on his back, trying to say something. He feels funny and looks strange. I hold his hand. It’s cold and shaking.

“What is it?” I say. “What’s wrong?”

He opens his mouth and wheezes.

I get nervous. “What’s wrong?” I ask. “Say something!”

His hands fall to his chest and start to feel weakly around. His fingertips hop up and down on his T-shirt as if he’s typing on an invisible keyboard. His lips move. I lean down to him and he breathes in my ear.

“Volker,” he gasps. “Get Volker.”

I sit up, jump over Felix onto the floor and run out into the hall. I race to the door I think is the one to Volker’s room. I yank it open but there’s no bed in the room, just a table and several armoires.

“Volker!” I cry. “Where are you? Volker!”

I run through the house, pulling open doors and yelling. It seems to go on forever. Behind all the doors is darkness and a musty smell. An ironing board falls out of one doorway and hits me hard on the head. I barely notice. I feel like I’m lost in a labyrinth. Everything starts to spin. I brace myself against a wall but it seems to recede from my hand.

“Volker, god damn it! Something’s wrong with Felix. Where are you?”

I begin to weep loudly.

Volker appears at the end of the hall. He’s barefoot. His upper body is naked. He’s buttoning his pants. He runs by without looking at me.

“Not in there!” I yell. “He’s in my room.”

Volker stops, turns around, and bounds down the stairs. I follow him. He’s faster than I am. I lurch down the stairs and nearly fall over.

In the guest room, he tries to sit Felix up. I turn on the light. Felix’s face is white and his lips are blue. There’s panic in his eyes. Volker braces him by his shoulders.

“Water,” he yells over his shoulder. “Get some cold water.”

I run to the kitchen and throw open the refrigerator door. I look for a glass, find one, and fill it with water. Half of it sloshes out as I run back. Felix tries to drink. His teeth clank against the rim of the glass.

“What else can I do?” I ask, agitated. “Where’s the medicine?”

“Shit,” Volker says. “We’ve got to get to the car.”

“You want me to look for it in the car?”

“No. We need to get in the car. It’s not stopping. We have to go to the hospital.”

Felix is moving his lips and looking at me. I go closer and kneel next to him. I can barely hear what he says. “Come with us,” he says. “Please.”

I pull my jeans on. Volker throws on a shirt. Felix puts up his arm as Volker goes to hoist him.

“I want to get dressed,” he says through his clenched teeth.

Volker rolls his eyes. “Stop screwing around,” he says. But I run upstairs, jerk open a drawer in his room, and pull out a pair of jeans by the ankles.

In the car I sit in back next to Felix again. His arm is draped around me while Volker floors it.

We hurtle down the autobahn at 120 miles per hour.

I don’t understand what’s happening. I hold Felix’s left hand and rub it, periodically slipping down to his wrist to feel his fluttering pulse. I press down on it, hoping to keep him from passing out. I’d love to use my other hand to cover my other ear so I wouldn’t have to hear the whistling noises coming out of his mouth, each one sending a chill down my spine.

Felix begins to collapse onto me.

“Volker,” I scream. “He’s losing it.”

Volker throws his mobile phone over his shoulder into my lap.

“Call them. The number’s listed under hospital. Tell them we’re on the way. Give them our name.”

I flip open the phone. It’s much more complicated than mine, and it takes some work to find the phone book and the right entry. Eventually I find it, push call, and hold the phone up to my ear. The sound of the road flying by under the car is so loud that I’m afraid I won’t be able to hear them answer.

Somebody picks up the line and I barely make out the words “pulmonary care.” I stammer and then say Felix’s first name. I blank on the last name.

“Trebur,” says Volker from the front seat.

“Felix Trebur,” I shout into the phone.

“Can’t breathe again. We can’t get it under control,” Volker says.

I repeat it like an echo.

I can’t understand what the voice at the other end of the line says. Then it’s gone.

“Got cut off,” I say, distraught. “Volker, I lost the guy on the phone. What should I do?”

“Nothing,” Volker says as calmly as anyone could possibly do while shooting down the fast lane in the middle of the night with someone about to croak in the back seat. “Thanks.”

“I didn’t understand what he said to me!”

“It doesn’t matter. They know we’re on the way. They know us well.”

I cradle Felix’s head in my hand, trying to make him more comfortable.

We get off the autobahn. I don’t notice where we are—I’m looking at Felix. As I look at his face in the pale light of the road lamps, I realize it has taken on a color I’ve never seen in any living person before. I’m sure he’s dead. I put a finger on his lips and am amazed to feel warm breath on it.

A mechanical arm across the road goes up. Then everything speeds up. Felix is whisked out and disappears on a gurney. Volker hurries out and runs after it with his hand gripping my upper arm. I let myself be pulled along. My knees nearly buckle.

Then we’re sitting on plastic chairs in a hallway. For ages. After the burst of activity, it feels like time is standing still now. The glaring fluorescent lights make Volker’s skin look yellow. He sits there with his legs spread wide apart, his head leaning against the wall, and his eyes closed. The top two buttons of his shirt are open. He’s a mess, and it doesn’t suit him. I’m tempted to tell him—or just to straighten him up myself.

“Volker,” I say after a long time, “what color is my face right now?”

He rubs his eyes before looking at me.

Green,” he says and leans his head back again.

“Volker,” I say, “where are we?”

“At the university medical center,” he says with his eyes closed.

“Volker,” I say, “why are we here?”

He lifts a hand, blindly finds my shoulder, and pats me on the back.

I get goose bumps along my shoulder blades.

“Volker,” I say, “what’s wrong with Felix?”

“It would be easier to tell you what’s right with him,” Volker says.

I’m not sure what to say to that.

“Felix was born with lungs that don’t always work,” he says. “For the first ten years of his life he spent one month out of every two in the hospital. Then he got a transplant.”

“Oh my god,” I say.

“If you two slept together, you must have heard it. When it’s quiet, his breathing sounds like a soft whistle.”

I remember the noise I was wondering about as I fell asleep.

“I thought the sound was from a mobile phone,” I say, and have the impression my ears have suddenly swollen and gone beet red. I touch them. They’re hot, but the same size as usual.

“At first I thought I’d never get used to it,” Volker says. “But you can get used to anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“The sound of his breathing. When we would go on vacation and stay in the same room, the noise used to drive me crazy. I started sleeping with earplugs. That’s why it took so long for me to hear you tonight.”