The Blind Side of the Heart (11 page)

Goodness, how red your cheeks are! said Leontine, passing her hand briefly over Helene’s hair. I hope you aren’t running a temperature?

Helene shook her head. She had a treasure tucked under her apron. She had found it on the very top shelf of the bookcase, wrapped in newspaper and lying behind the other books as if hidden away. It was more than a hundred years old. The cardboard binding was covered with coloured paper and there was an embossed title:
Penthesilea
.
A Tragedy.
Helene apologized briefly to Martha and Leontine, bent down behind the big wooden counter and hid her treasure in the lowest drawer there. She put some of the old Bautzen Household Almanacs over the book to conceal it.

A farmer from the Lusatian Hills had given Leontine the basket of peas as a thank-you present. Months ago, she had splinted a difficult break of his wrist. Now Leontine put the big basket on the counter in front of Helene. It was full of plump green pea pods. Helene immediately plunged both hands into the basket and ploughed them through the pods. They had a young, grassy smell. Helene loved popping pods open with her thumb and the sensation of pushing out the smooth, gleaming, green peas from top to bottom in order of size, to roll down her thumb and into the bowl. She would put the tiny peas that weren’t fully mature yet straight into her mouth. Martha and Leontine were talking about something that Helene wasn’t supposed to understand, giggling and gurgling. They spoke only in mysterious half-sentences.

He was asking all the nurses and the patients about you. Oh, and to see his face when he finally found you! Martha was amused.

Dear child. Leontine rolled her eyes as she spoke, obviously imitating the farmer.

Oh, I come over all peculiar when I see you, nurse! Martha put in. She was spluttering with laughter. Nurse, I’m yours heart and soul!

He didn’t say that? Leontine was laughing too.

He did. You should have seen the way his hand kept going to his trousers. I thought he was going to fall on you there and then.

But our dear professor didn’t think it was funny at all: oh, take your peas and go away, you seem to have finished work at noon today. Leontine sighed. And usually I can never stay too long for him.

Are you surprised? Didn’t you hear what he said to the ward sister about you the other day: she may look like a flapper, but she’s something of a bluestocking!

He thinks highly of you, but his fears are growing.

Fears? Leontine waved the idea away. Our professor doesn’t know the meaning of fear. Why, anyway? I’m a nurse, that’s all.

The girls were shelling the peas now.

A long silence followed. But suppose you do go away after all? Martha was bracing herself for anything.

Helene didn’t want to see her sister’s grave face now. She tried to imagine she was invisible.

Leontine did not react.

Go away to Dresden, I mean. To study. That’s what everyone is saying you’ll do.

Never. Leontine hesitated. Not unless you come with me.

That’s stupid, Leontine, just plain stupid. Martha sounded both sad and stern. You know I can’t.

There you are, then, said Leontine. In that case nor can I.

Martha put her hand on the nape of her friend’s neck, drew her face close and kissed her on the lips.

Helene’s breath faltered; she quickly turned away. There must be something she ought to do, look for something on the top shelf of the bookcase, or maybe take a stack of paper out of its pigeonhole and put it on the desk. The picture seemed to be burned on her retina: Martha drawing Leontine towards her, Leontine pursing her lips ready for the kiss. Perhaps Helene had mistaken what she saw? She risked a cautious glance over her shoulder. Leontine and Martha were bending over the basket full of pea pods, and it was as if there had never been a kiss at all.

But suppose you took her with you? She could train as a nurse in Dresden. Leontine was speaking quietly, now, and her glance went to Helene. Helene acted as if she had heard nothing and hadn’t realized that they were talking about her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Martha shaking her head. There was another long silence. Helene felt that her presence was inhibiting their conversation. At first she thought of leaving the two of them alone and going out, but next moment she felt rooted to the spot. She couldn’t move her feet; she severed the umbilical cords of the peas and felt a sense of shame. She didn’t want Leontine to leave them, she didn’t want Martha and Leontine to stop talking because of her, and she didn’t want Martha and Leontine to kiss each other either.

That evening in bed, Helene turned her back to Martha. Martha could scratch her own back, she thought. Helene didn’t want to cry. She breathed deeply and her eyes swelled, her nose felt smaller and stuffed up. Breathing was difficult.

Helene didn’t want to count freckles either, or feel for Martha’s stomach under the blanket. She thought of the kiss. And while she imagined kissing Leontine, knowing that only Martha would kiss her, tears escaped from her eyes.

Mother expected Helene to run the printing works so that no red figures had to be written in the accounts books. She found that easier every day. A profit recently entered could easily compensate for the losses of the early part of the year, which appeared numerically slight by comparison. What that meant wasn’t clear to Mother. She was just surprised to see how seldom Helene ran any of the machines.

Not wishing to waste stocks of paper, Helene designed simple calculation tables. She suspected that people could make good use of her ready reckoners in these times of rising prices.

The mere sight of one of her ready reckoners cheered Helene up. How nice and straight her figures were! It had been worth giving the figure 8 more space than the others, and the margin was so neat.

When news of the typesetter’s dismissal got around town, it wasn’t long before Frau Hantusch the baker’s wife put an unusually small and over-baked loaf down on her counter when Helene went to buy bread.

Helene asked if she could please have one of the two larger, lighter-coloured loaves still on the shelf instead. But the baker’s wife, who used to press little pieces of butter-cake into her hand only a few years ago, shook her head as well as anyone with almost no neck could. The deep line marking the short distance between her breasts and her head didn’t move at all as she shook it. Helene ought to be glad she could still buy a loaf at all, she said. Helene took it.

You poor thing. The baker’s wife was short of breath, her heavy lids covered her eyes, her words expressed sympathy but her tone was both indignant and injured. Operating heavy machinery these days. A girl, working machinery! The baker’s wife shook her head again in her laborious way.

Helene stopped in the doorway. It’s not hard to learn, she said, and felt as if she were lying. I’ve printed some very nice ready reckoners. I can bring you one on Monday if you like, we could do a deal – you get a ready reckoner, I get four loaves of bread.

Nothing doing, said the baker’s wife.

Three?

To think of girls at a man’s work these days, we can’t have that kind of thing. Your mother’s well off. Why didn’t she let the typesetter keep his job?

Don’t worry, I’ll be starting to train as a nurse in September. We don’t have anything left. Most of what we did have was money, and money’s worth nothing now.

The baker’s wife raised her eyebrows sceptically. These days everyone suspected their neighbours of owning more than they did. Helene remembered how, early this year when she had wanted to do something to please her mother, she had gone into her room and stripped the sheets off the bed to do a big wash. Only when she lifted the mattress to put a clean sheet on it did she see the banknotes. Huge quantities of them tucked into its stuffing. Notes of many different currencies, bundles of them tucked among the feathers and held together with paperclips. The numbers printed on the notes were of small denominations, ridiculously small. As Helene, alarmed by her unintentional discovery, hastily threw the old sheet over the mattress again, she heard her mother’s voice behind her.

You little devil. How much have you stolen from me already? Come on, how much?

Helene turned and saw her mother leaning on the door frame, so angry that she could hardly stay upright leaning against it. She was drawing on her thin cigar as if extracting information from it.

I’ve been asking myself for years: Selma, I’ve been asking myself, who in this house is stealing from you? Her voice sounded low and threatening. And all these years I’ve been telling myself, well, it won’t have been your daughter, Selma, never, not your own child.

I was only going to change the sheets, Mother.

What an excuse, what a mean, shabby excuse. And with these words her mother went for Helene, clutching her throat so tightly that she could breathe only by raising her hand against her mother to push her away with all her might. She pinched her mother’s arms, but they would not loosen their grip. Helene tried to scream and couldn’t. Not until footsteps came up the stairs, and Mariechen audibly cleared her throat, did her mother let go.

Helene had not set foot in her mother’s room since then. She remembered how scared she had been at the sight of those banknotes and wondered how, with her own faultless bookkeeping, her mother could have contrived to put them all aside. Money that, as Helene was sure, was worth hardly anything now. Money that, if it had been spent at the right time, would have kept the whole household going and might have allowed her to study.

Helene looked at Frau Hantusch the baker’s wife. She couldn’t help thinking that the woman’s doubts arose from discontent with her own situation.

Last week we had some particularly good stout paper in. Paper with a high proportion of wax in it. Helene smiled as nicely as she could. It stands up to moisture well, it would be just the thing in your shop.

Thanks, Lenchen, thank you very much, but I can tell my customers the daily price of bread myself. The baker’s wife pointed to her mouth with one fat forefinger. It’s all in here, that’s what counts. Having it on paper would just be a waste of money.

W
hen 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.