Alois Hotschnig - Maybe This Time

The affection in her gaze was hard to bear because I had already decided to leave.

We sat facing each other silently for a while. Then she said, I’ll get Karl. Isn’t that why you’re here?

I had no idea what she was talking about, but she obviously didn’t expect an answer. She stood up and walked out of the room, leaving me alone, surrounded by all her dolls. I heard furniture being pushed aside, chests being opened, and now and again the creaking of a cupboard door or window. She left me alone for an uncomfortably long time, alone with her dolls. I considered the best way to escape without offending her unduly. After all, I was expected elsewhere.

Just then I heard her through the door. Karl would never forgive me if he missed seeing you. I don’t want that responsibility, you understand. He’s been waiting for you such a long time, ever since he was a child. All these years he has been asking and asking for you.

I got up and leaned against the door to hear better.

Why did you leave him, she said, he’s always asking me that. I certainly can’t explain it. He waited all this time, and now, finally, here you are. He’s just getting ready for you, she said. You know, in the end he didn’t believe me any more. He didn’t believe in you either. Believe in you being there for him , I mean.

For a moment there was silence in the room and I already had my hand on the doorknob when the woman returned. She was holding a doll in her arms like a child. She came over to me and took me by the hand. She looked at me in embarrassment, but not without a certain pride. Then she led me back to the sofa, sat down and asked me to sit too. I took the chair facing the sofa. I had no idea how I would ever escape.

This is Karl, she said, and gently stroked the doll’s hair. Without thinking, I brushed the hair off my forehead in a matching gesture. Look at his face, she said.

The doll had my name. And now, as the woman drew my attention to the doll’s face, I noticed how much it resembled me.

He’ll come back one day, I always told him, she said straightening the doll’s rumpled waistcoat. He will somehow have to come to terms with you. Why you left him and why you are here now, she continued. It’s a bit much for him. That’s why he’s not saying anything. But you’ll get used to each other. It’s not always easy with him because he keeps asking questions. She suddenly stopped and stared into space, staring right through me as if I were no longer there.

My name is Karl, I said, but the woman didn’t answer. I didn’t know how to handle the situation or how to deal with my new friend — a friend I was obviously starting to accept.

He’s not a bad kid, she said. Peculiar, yes, but you already knew that and, let’s face it, you’re all he’s got. And he’s been waiting ever since you abandoned him. That’s when he came to me. He can’t talk to you about it, at least not yet. But things will work out now you’ve finally come back. And now I’ll leave the two of you alone, she said, and stood up and left the room.

She had sat the doll on the sofa, right where she had been sitting. I noticed it looked exactly like me and wore the same clothes. It sat facing me on the sofa and stared me in the eye with interest. I was tempted to reach out and touch it, but at the same time I recoiled from it.

The resemblance was already striking, but it seemed to increase the more I looked.

Karl, I thought. The little fellow had my name. I looked him in the eye and at that moment remembered how, when I was a child, my mother would call me by my brother’s name whenever she was upset or wanted to punish me. Over the years I had got used to it. Now that she was in a nursing home, she did it often, and it was hard to tell if this was a slip of the tongue or if she really took me for my brother.

This memory recurred as vividly as if I were experiencing it for the first time. A noise in the next room startled me, and I suddenly realized how late it was. I had completely lost track of time. I called out and knocked on the door but there was no sound of movement behind it, so I wrote a quick note promising to return, placed it on my double’s lap and finally left the house.

It was too late to visit my old school friend, and in any case I no longer felt in the mood. Not after this. The woman obviously had no family and was lonely and forsaken. No matter how much she told me about her children, I didn’t believe a word. That is until I crossed a few streets and passed a Salon Annie that I had never noticed before, and then, a few streets further on, read the name Salon Elly on a hairdresser’s window. I was no longer so sure. In the following days and weeks I couldn’t forget the old woman. I kept remembering her even in situations that had nothing to do with her. It became harder and harder for me to resist the temptation to go back and see her, as I had promised to do. I felt sorry for her and assumed that was why I couldn’t stop thinking about her. But I soon realized that I also wanted something from her. After all, I had been in her house when I saw myself, through Karl , in a way I had never done before. And it was this encounter that drew me irresistibly to her. I thought of her at every conceivable opportunity. If I saw an old lady being helped down from a bus, I thought of her and how she could probably no longer drive anywhere alone. Or in the café, when the woman at the next table smiled at me, no doubt because she had seen me watching her. She had only just managed to catch the ring she had been toying with before it slipped out of her fingers. Embarrassed, she flashed me a smile which I returned, though I was really thinking of the old woman sitting at home surrounded by her dolls and holding Karl on her lap. I couldn’t decide if Karl belonged to her or to me.

I didn’t mention a word of this to my wife. I kept the encounter to myself because it was too personal to risk sharing with anyone else. At least not before I had a chance to get to the bottom of it. I contacted my school friend and apologized for not coming the other day, angling for another invitation, so that I had an excuse to walk past the woman’s house again.

From the moment I arrived at my friend’s, I found that he and I were as distant as we had been at school. I wondered why he had invited me in the first place. His wife tried hard to make up for his aloofness towards me, until I mentioned their neighbour. Then she, too, gave me the cold shoulder. The younger of their two daughters, who up to that point had sat close by me, every now and again casually brushing against me, moved away and refused to go to bed because she was afraid of the mean lady , as they referred to her. Whenever my friend and his wife got the girl to her bedroom door, she screamed and resisted with all her might. One or the other of the two girls was constantly coming into the room to be comforted by their mother, but also so they wouldn’t miss a word of what we might be saying about the old woman. She stands at her window all day, watching from behind half-drawn blinds everything that goes on outside, my friend’s wife explained. She can see everything from there, she said, and the children are afraid of her because she keeps luring them into her house. She frightens and upsets the children so much that you can’t get a word out of them.

Today she was looking at us again, one of the girls said. She was looking in here, into my room, she said, crawling onto her mother’s lap, holding onto her arm and not taking her eyes off me.

You know that’s not true, her mother said. No one can see into this room, not from over there. She tried to calm the child by telling her that the woman would soon be moving away since her house was listed for sale in the newspaper. Besides, she had no one who cared for her, and desperately wanted company. That didn’t reassure the children, so my friend’s wife promised to speak to the woman in the next day or two.