The Blind Side of the Heart (35 page)

The housemaid opened the front door for Helene and went to the wrought-iron gate with her.

As soon as the gate had latched behind Helene and she could go down the road, past the wood and into the light of the sun shining pitilessly down, she began to cry. She couldn’t find a handkerchief in her little handbag, so she dried her tears on her bare forearm from time to time, and when her nose ran she picked a maple leaf and blew her nose into that. Young oak shoots in the undergrowth. She walked through the wood, past the red-flecked trunks of the pine trees, over protruding roots. Dust rose from the sandy forest floor.

NIGHT FALLING

W
hy did you think I was dead? Carl put his arm round Helene and drew her gently to him. How warm he was. There was a greenish shimmer about his fur collar. Helene buried her nose in smooth hair, a pelt smelling of Carl, fine, spicy tobacco.

Everyone thought so. You’d disappeared.

I had to go underground. Carl wouldn’t say any more. Helene thought there could be reasons she wasn’t to know. She was glad he was there with her.

Only the twittering bird disturbed her. Cheep, cheep. Green as stone. The curtains were green as stone, green as lichen, the light made the green stream in, made the colour of the curtains look paler. Helene’s heart was hammering. A slight wind was blowing in, the curtains billowed. Those couldn’t be the curtains of the first-floor room overlooking the courtyard. Not possibly. Helene turned over, her heart racing, lay flat on her front, her heart beat against the mattress, throbbing as if it wanted to go from one place to another, and if she turned on her back again it would leap out of her. It turned a somersault, stumbled, Helene breathed in, she must breathe deeply, breathe calmly, tame her heart, lighten it, nothing easier, her heart was too light anyway, it was already up and away, it was making off. Helene counted heartbeat after heartbeat, she counted to over a hundred. Her throat felt tight, her heart was running away from her counting, she put her fingers on her wrist, her pulse was racing too, pulse at rest, pulse beat one hundred and four, five, six, seven. Ought she to know this blanket, was it hers? What had happened to pulse beat number eight? She must have reached number twelve by now. One hundred and twelve. She closed her eyes firmly, harsh eyes, perhaps she could get back to Carl again. But it didn’t work. The more she wanted to be with him the further away he retreated, going back into the dream, into a world where her will counted for nothing. Helene dried her face with the sheet. Dappled sunlight on the mattress, marking a memory of something, of what? Blankets. Helene held her hand in the light, sun on her skin, that was entirely pleasant. Pleasant as if a day like this might hold something in store for her. Dark patches on the sheet, damp, the sweat had run from her armpits, had been weeping from the pores under her arms, tears, thin sweat. Helene would get up now, she’d be expected, although after her night shift she didn’t come back on duty until two this afternoon. Helene got up. She wasn’t sweating too much. She dressed herself. She had washed her clothes yesterday evening and hung them over the chair in front of the window so that they would be dry in the morning. Her clothes smelled of Fanny’s soap, everything did, except Carl’s vest that she still wore, his inner garment her outer one by night, when she was where he was now. She didn’t want other people to smell Carl, or the mixture that she and Carl had become with time.

Outside the air was full of sunlight. The postman went his way whistling, swinging his bag back and forth, it dangled, a light weight, perhaps he’d delivered all the letters. He glanced at Helene and gave a friendly whistle through his teeth, making it the beginning of a well-known tune. Two children hopped along the paving stones with their school satchels on their backs, one of them fell, the other child had pushed him and now ran away with a mischievous laugh. There was whistling everywhere, and stones and hopping and children and roads, none of it intentional, it had nothing to do with Helene in particular, presumably it would be just the same if she weren’t here. No one meant Helene any harm.

Summer heat made the air above the paving stones quiver, liquid air, blurred images, puddles showing where there hadn’t been any for weeks.

There was a smell of tar; a wooden fence was being painted black on the other side of the street, and the ground under Helene’s feet felt slightly yielding. The tram squealed as it went round the bend, driving slowly, so that the squealing was long-drawn-out, you heard the dragging sound on the curve and saw the sparks flying, and it didn’t stop for a long time. Helene liked everything vague and indistinct these days; she lay in wait for it, but as soon as she thought she saw it, it went away. The heat slowed the city down, enfeebling its inhabitants, thought Helene, making them soft and flexible, crippling them. The less Helene herself weighed, the more oppressively did the heat weigh down on her. It wasn’t unpleasant. Helene’s body had grown thin but not weak. On Leontine’s recommendation she had found a post at the Bethany Hospital and was working as a nurse again for the first time in years. The pharmacist was relieved, and indeed it lifted a burden from his shoulders, for he had hardly known how to pay her recently. She was paid no money at the Bethany either to start with; for the first three months she was on probation, but there would be pay as soon as she had her remaining qualifications. For the time being, Helene borrowed some money from Leontine.

She was friendly to everyone, yet she never really talked to anyone. Good day, she said to the bloated, dying man in Ward 27. Are you feeling better today?

Yes, of course; thanks to your pills I finally managed to stop worrying about my will yesterday evening and get some sleep.

The patients liked talking to her, not just about their illnesses but about their families, whose behaviour could be particularly odd around a deathbed. The bloated man’s wife, for instance, no longer ventured to visit his bedside alone, but always came with his younger brother, whose hand she sometimes sought and sometimes pushed away. There was something about the hands of those two, and the dying man confided to Helene that he had known about their secret relationship for several years, but hadn’t shown that he knew, because he wanted them to inherit his property with a clear conscience. That way it would all stay in the family, wouldn’t it? None of the patients had ever ventured to reply to Helene’s question by asking how she was herself. Her uniform protected her. The white apron was a stronger signal than any of the traffic lights going up at more and more road junctions in the city these days, shining brightly to show who could go and who must stop. If you wore white you could keep your mouth shut; if you wore white you weren’t asked how you were. Courtesy was all on the outside for Helene and hardly tamed her despair, but it controlled it; pity for the suffering of others was her inner prop and stay. She wondered whether her bloated patient could really die more easily for knowing that his wife was having an affair with his brother. Perhaps he was just imagining the affair so that he could bear to say goodbye. It was easy for Helene to remember the names of patients, where they came from, their family histories. She knew who liked to be addressed in what tone and respected the wishes of patients who preferred silence. If Helene did manage to drop off to sleep at night, she was woken by the grinding of her own teeth and her weeping. Only when she dreamed of Carl coming back, kissing her, surprised to find that he had plunged Helene and his family into distress and mourning, but explaining that it was all a misunderstanding, he hadn’t died at all, only then did she sleep well. However, waking up after such nights and returning to her life was difficult, coming back to a new day like this one, an ordin-ary, unasked-for, unwanted, unimaginable new day of her life. What was her life really like? What was it going to be like, was it ever to be anything, was
she
ever to be anything? Helene tried to breathe, to breathe easily, lightly. But her ribcage wouldn’t expand and she could hardly take in air. She kept thinking what it was like when you fell down flat in childhood and the impact winded you, making breathing impossible for ages, your mouth was open, there was air around it, but the rest of your body was self-contained, closed. Yet living in the usual way, with nothing showing on the surface, was surprisingly easy. She was healthy, she could stretch and bend each of her fingers separately until her hand looked as if it were foreshortened; she could put her head on one side and her body obeyed. Her internal irregularities gave her no trouble; Helene could work even if her heart sometimes skipped a beat and breathing was difficult.

The other nurses went to dances and on moonlit outings together, and they always asked Helene if she’d like to come too. In the changing room they tried on the shorts they were going to wear on the beach of the Wannsee.

Look at this, said the young nurse who was generally known to be bubbly, swaying her hips and cheerfully sticking out her behind. Helene liked the gesture and thought of Leontine; yes, something about the bubbly nurse reminded her of Leontine. She was like a boy with her cropped hair, standing there in the new shorts and showing the other nurses her behind, although she could be both stern and mischievous on her rounds of the wards. Then another girl would try on the shorts. Wouldn’t Helene like a go, they asked, she really must go to the bathing beach with them some time. Helene refused the invitation, saying she had a prior engagement. She invented an aunt who needed to be cared for; she wanted to be left in peace. The nurses’ giggling and soft laughter were pleasant so long as they left her alone, with silence in the background, but as soon as they tried to draw her into their group, turned to her, demanding answers and wanting her to join them, it felt like too much of a strain. She couldn’t swim anyway, she told the bubbly nurse, who perhaps suspected as much and thought that Helene wouldn’t go swimming with the rest of them out of embarrassment or awkwardness.

Never mind, most of us girls have only just learned to swim this summer, haven’t we? Yes, cried the nurses happily in chorus. Helene liked her colleagues, their cheerfulness appealed to her. She didn’t want pity, she didn’t want embarrassed silence, she didn’t tell any of the others about Carl and his death.

In autumn a rather older nurse told Helene she looked gaunt. Thin. She’d had her eye on her for some time, said the woman, was she ill? Behind the question mark, Helene detected the word
consumption
and a faint hope rose in her. Helene said no, but she was told to go to the doctor, they couldn’t run any risks in the ward for infectious diseases.

Helene was not ill; her pulse was rather fast, that was all, and her heartbeat was sometimes irregular. The doctor asked her whether she had any pain, whether she’d noticed anything unusual about herself. Helene said she sometimes suddenly felt afraid, just like that, but she didn’t know what she was afraid of. Her heart beat fast, so fast that it caught up with itself and there didn’t seem to be enough room for it in her chest. The doctor listened to her chest a second time, placing the cold metal of the stethoscope almost tenderly on the breast that no longer swelled in a gentle curve. Her ribs could be felt under it. He listened to her heart and shook his head. A little heart murmur, that’s quite common. Nothing to worry about. Her fear, well, perhaps there were reasons for it? Helene shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about Carl, or say that she hadn’t had a period since his death. Perhaps she just didn’t drink enough fluids, but what business was that of anyone else? She had been to see Leontine at the Charité in spring and asked her to examine her. But Leontine had reassured her; she wasn’t pregnant. Helene felt only a moment’s disappointment, for how could she have earned enough to support a child? It was only her heart that sometimes played tricks, her ribcage that seemed too narrow. Her greatest fear was of fear itself.

Well, if that’s all, said the doctor, with a twinkle in his eye. Helene guessed that he was thinking of the famous Viennese case histories of hysteria. When she had dressed again the doctor asked, with a nice smile, whether he could invite her out for coffee with him some time.

Helene said no, thank you very much but no. That was all she said. She went to the door.

No, just like that? The doctor hesitated; he didn’t want to shake hands and let her go until she had said yes. Helene stepped through the doorway, wishing him a pleasant day.

Martha was to stay at the sanatorium until the beginning of winter, and Leontine was looking for an apartment so that they wouldn’t have to move into Achenbachstrasse again when Martha came back. That made it difficult for Helene to prevent unobserved encounters with Erich when she was on her own in the apartment. She lacked the strength and willpower to be constantly on the watch for him in order to avoid such meetings. He pressed his lips on hers, he kissed her where and how he liked. She tried to resist, but unsuccessfully. He would draw her into a room, put his tongue down her throat, and recently he had taken to kneading a nipple with one of his rough hands as he did so. He didn’t mind Cleo watching, whimpering in alarm and wagging her tail pleadingly rather than, as usual, cheerfully.

At such moments Helene was glad when she heard Otta coming, because then Erich would generally let her go. It was even better if Fanny came home from a brief shopping trip or some other outing and Erich moved away from Helene without another word. There were days when some instinct warned Helene not to move from Otta’s side; she accompanied her into the kitchen, she went shopping with her. But there were other days, like today, when Helene thought she was alone in the apartment, picked up a newspaper and sat in the former veranda, which Fanny had converted into a conservatory by adding glazed windows. Then, in the silence, brisk footsteps approached. Erich came in, sat down at the low table opposite her and put one foot on his knee, his leg bent at a sharp angle. Mhm. He made these vague noises from time to time, mhm, as if she had said something, mhm, mhm, he agreed with her, or perhaps it was more of an mhm of disagreement, or an expectant mhm, mhmhm, mhm, just as if he were suffering from some reflex, it was like the snuffling of a guinea pig, mhm, he watched her reading the paper. Ten minutes passed without a word. Erich stood up, took the newspaper away from her and said: I know what you need.