Audrey Magee - The Undertaking

‘Leave that, Katharina. You have to do this.’

‘I don’t want to do it. Any of it.’

‘It’s too late for that now, Katharina.’

Katharina rubbed her hands down the length of her apron and lingered as she hung it from its hook.

‘We should sort out your things, Peter.’

‘Your brother has done very well, Katharina.’

‘He was a star of the youth movement. He won everything.’

‘And you?’

‘I won nothing. I either tripped or came last.’

He smiled at her and followed her to the large bedroom used by her parents until that morning. Katharina had removed their possessions and cleaned the room, the walls, floor and bed, turning the space into her own, marking it with vases of rose buds on either side of the bed. She opened the door and inhaled sharply.

‘God, this place stinks,’ she said.

‘It’s my pack,’ said Faber. ‘I’m sorry.’

The lights still out, she opened the two large windows and looked down onto the street, drained of movement and light by the curfew.

‘My mother thinks you have lice.’

‘She’s probably right. Everybody does.’

‘How can you come here with lice in your hair?’

‘I didn’t know I had them. It’s second nature to scratch in Russia. Have you ever had them?’

‘We are sometimes a little hungry in Berlin, but never dirty.’

‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

Katharina looked at him. At the man she had chosen.

‘We need to sort you out,’ she said. ‘Close the shutters and curtains, but leave the windows open. Then we can turn on the light.’

Faber sat on the chair she had positioned below the bulb hanging from the ceiling. She lifted a clump of hair. Dozens of parasites were crawling across his scalp.

‘It’s disgusting.’

‘Will you ever kiss me again?’

‘I haven’t yet.’

She stepped back from him and sprinkled the powder over his head, its caustic cloud falling onto his face, into his eyes. She ignored his complaints.

‘Do you have them anywhere else? In your armpits?’

‘Not that I am aware of. I didn’t notice any in the bath.’

She took a narrow-toothed comb from her mother’s dressing table and used it to drag the powder through his hair, her throat burned by the bile rising from her stomach. She went back to the window and waited for the insects to die and then picked them out, dropping them into the dressing table dish she used to hold her hairpins.

‘I’m sorry, Katharina.’

She went to the bathroom, bumping the door against her mother who was on her hands and knees mopping the muddied floor with a cloth. Katharina stepped over her and scraped the lice into the toilet.

‘You’ve got your hands full with that one, Katharina.’

She flushed, scrubbed furiously at the comb and dish, and then at her hands.

‘He said that he had none under his arms.’

‘What about his groin?’

‘I didn’t ask.’

‘Maybe you should.’

‘I don’t know that I can.’

‘I’ll soak his uniform in the bath. You can do his pack. They’ll be in there too.’

‘We’ll need more powder.’

‘I’ll look for some in the morning.’

Katharina stared at herself in the mirror, certain that her skin had aged since his arrival.

‘I hope you’re not right, Mother. About the doctor’s son.’

She ran her fingers across her now pale lips, but decided against adding more lipstick.

‘I’d better go back to him.’

‘I suppose you had.’

‘Goodnight, Mother.’

‘Goodnight, Katharina.’

He rose to his feet as she walked in, clicked his heels and bowed.

‘My dear new wife, will you ever forgive me?’

‘I doubt it.’

He ran his fingers across her forehead, flattening the deep furrows.

‘I’m not as awful as you think,’ he said.

‘Aren’t you?’

She moved away from him, back towards the window.

‘What were you expecting, Katharina? Casanova? You picked me from a bloody catalogue.’

‘And it was obviously a lousy choice.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You arrived here covered in lice and stinking so badly that I thought I would vomit. What was I expecting? Somebody who had bothered to wash.’

‘I didn’t want to leave the train, Katharina.’

‘What?’

‘I was supposed to get off in Poland, at the cleansing station, but I was afraid that they would send me back. That I wouldn’t get home. So, I stayed on the train. And nobody noticed.’

‘I bloody did.’

He laughed, and covered his face with his hands.

‘I’m sorry, Katharina. I just had to get away from there.’

She sat down on the end of the bed.

‘I’m sorry, Peter. I didn’t expect it to be this difficult. This awkward.’

‘What had you expected?’

She smiled.

‘I don’t know. Flowers. Chocolates. Not head lice.’

He sat down beside her. She moved away.

‘I don’t want to catch them.’

‘You nearly killed me with the powder, so I doubt that any of them has survived.’

She laughed.

‘You’re beautiful when you laugh.’

‘Not just pretty?’

‘No. Beautiful. How many men did you write to?’

‘Just to you. Did you write to other women?’

‘No.’

He reached for her hand and she let him take it.

‘When was your photograph taken?’ she said.

‘Just before I left for Russia.’

‘It’s a nice photograph.’

‘Nicer than me in the flesh.’

‘I don’t know. Just different.’

‘How?’

‘Your face is different. Kinder, maybe.’

‘So you’re disappointed?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

‘It’s a hard place, Katharina.’

‘I can smell that.’

They lay across the bed that she had made up that day, working with her mother, an embarrassed silence between the women as they tucked and folded the sheets. She moved her hair away from his.

‘What’s it like on the front?’ she said. ‘Johannes tells us very little in his letters.’

‘Let’s talk about something else.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like you as a little girl.’

‘I lost all the races. There is nothing more. That’s all I was – the girl who came last in everything. Except sewing and cooking – I was always good at those. What about you? What were you good at?’

But he was asleep. A light snore rose from him. She prodded him.

‘There are pyjamas under the pillow for you.’

He put them on, his back to her.

‘I’m sorry, Katharina. I’m exhausted.’

‘It’s fine.’

He kissed her on the cheek, this man in her brother’s pyjamas, and fell back to sleep. She sat at the dressing table to brush her hair, to look at herself, this woman married to a man she did not know. She pulled on a long nightdress and climbed in beside him.

Shortly before dawn, Faber woke, sweating and panting, his body no longer accustomed to comfort and warmth. He threw off the covers and lay still, quietening his breath, absorbing the coolness of the dark air.

Katharina lay beside him, still asleep. He turned away from her and put his feet on the floor. He would leave, slip away to his parents’ living room of soft chairs and matching crockery. He stood up but then slumped back down again. Her mother had his uniform. He slapped his head onto the pillow. Katharina woke.

‘Are you all right?’ she said.

‘I’m fine. Go back to sleep.’

‘Are all those lice dead?’

He laughed.

‘They’re well murdered.’

‘I’m glad.’

She moved across the bed towards him, and set her hand on his chest.

‘It’s all a little odd, isn’t it?’ she said.