Alina Bronsky - Just Call Me Superhero

“Did he take off?” I asked Friedrich, pointing at the empty stretcher.

“Showering.” Friedrich wiped his face with his forearm, leaving soap foam on his eyebrows.

It looked like there had been an orgy on the lawn. Empty red wine bottles lying around under the table. Paper plates and bits of tinfoil fluttering in the wind. A little tabby cat sat on the table licking the salad bowl out.

I went back into the house and looked through the kitchen cabinets for a garbage bag. Couldn’t find one so I grabbed a shopping bag instead. Ran into the guru, his face looked rumpled and he reeked of aftershave.

“Yes, I’m ashamed,” he said. “I just can’t understand how it happened.”

I shrugged my shoulders. He might as well feel bad — it never hurt anyone.

“Is anyone else injured?”

I couldn’t help laughing. Then I took the shopping bag outside and began to pick up the trash.

We planned to have breakfast in the garden together around noon. An hour beforehand I started knocking on Janne’s door.

“Can’t right now,” she called, sounding happy, and I wondered how she knew it was me who was knocking. Or whether she thought it was somebody else. Or whether she even cared. Every time I thought about her taking off my glasses, I got chills down my spine.

Kevin was standing in our room complaining of a migraine, trying to get a pain reliever out of Marlon. Marlon said he didn’t have any.

“That can’t be true,” Kevin whined, grabbing Marlon’s T-shirt. “I can tell you have some. Look again.”

I watched this play and weighed my desire to steer clear of Marlon against the need to talk to him. I felt like a pig, but a lucky pig.

So I decided to wait on my bed until Marlon had gotten rid of Kevin. Then at some point Kevin started to cry. I couldn’t watch. I jumped up and starting rummaging around in my suitcase for my pills. I pushed one out of the blister pack and handed it to Kevin.

“It’s good for everything,” I said. “Consider yourself warned.”

“You are my savior.” Kevin pressed the hand with the pill to his forehead theatrically and put his other hand to his heart. The he blew a kiss to Marlon and, when he didn’t react, another one to me, and then minced out of the room.

*

“Marlon,” I said when we were finally alone. “I have to talk to you.”

He was standing sideways to me with his hands in his pockets. He swayed back and forth. Somehow it reminded me of a tiger behind bars.

“Marlon,” I said. “I really don’t know how to say this. The problem is that you look absolutely perfect, even if you can’t tell, and I am as ugly as the night and always will be. You can’t possibly understand what that means. Not only that, you’re cool, and I seem to have forever lost the ability to strike the right tone.”

“Your phone rang all night,” he interrupted.

My cell. I picked it up. I hadn’t looked at it a single time since we got here. I had forgotten to send Claudia a message to say I’d arrived safely. She was probably worried sick. She might not have had the guru’s number, either. She didn’t even know exactly where we were.

I tipped over the chair as I searched for my phone in my suitcase, in the wardrobe, and finally found it in a jacket pocket. I had eleven missed calls, all from Claudia. She started dialing me yesterday night and didn’t stop until the early morning hours. There was only one text, from a number I didn’t recognize. I read it first. It said: “Marek our father is died come cwick. Ferdi.”

At first I took it for a joke. Somebody was trying to trick me. Some huckster wanted me to call that fraudulent number and it would charge me hundreds of euros. If not for those five letters. Ferdi. Ferdi was the little son of my father and my former au pair. My half-brother who I’d never seen. The baby in that photo six years ago. Ferdinand. Claudia had sighed, “How could you do that to a child?”

Suddenly my knees buckled and I was afraid to listen to Claudia’s messages. She hadn’t sent me any texts because she wanted to tell me directly. I did not want to hear it directly. I wanted to hide my phone under a pillow, lock the door to the room, and go have breakfast. I didn’t want anything to do with this.

Marlon came closer. No matter what everybody said, I no longer believed he was really blind. He asked, “What is it?” and I held out the phone with the text on it. He didn’t move.

“I got a message.” Then I read it to him.

“What’s Ferdi?” asked Marlon.

I didn’t answer.

“And is it your father who’s dead?”

Again I said nothing.

“This brother, does he have a strange sense of humor?”

“He’s still little,” I said. “Six or so.”

“Then you need to get going,” said Marlon. “To the funeral.”

I had no idea what was to be done. What I should do or say. I felt like a first grader who’d accidentally wandered into an empty classroom. I wondered whether I really needed to go to my father’s funeral since we’d been out of touch for a while. But my father had visited me in the hospital, so I guess I also had to go to his funeral.

Just to be sure, I asked Marlon his opinion.

“Don’t be crazy,” he said.

I read the text again. It still said the same thing. Marek our father is died come cwick. Ferdi . The letters were all still there.

“Who was trying to reach you all night?” asked Marlon.

“My mother.”

“Call her back.”

“I’m afraid.”

“Do it. It’ll just get worse otherwise.”

I nodded and dialed Claudia’s number. And as soon as I heard her voice on the line I knew there was no hope that it had all been a misunderstanding.

A little brother, how cute,” said Kevin. “Do you have a photo?”

Richard looked at him and shook his head. The guru was holding his head in his hands and still didn’t look good. I clenched my phone as if somebody else would die if I let go of it.

Claudia had cried on the phone. I had grown accustomed to her never crying anymore. I was ready to do anything to keep it that way. And now this.

I truly didn’t understand why she was even crying. Why she sobbed “why now,” as if today was so much worse than yesterday or the day after tomorrow. He had left her, and she’d been happy without him for a long time now. They hadn’t been in touch, at least as far as I knew. She still had Dirk, I thought tolerantly.

“Ach, Marek,” she said after I asked her about that. “You really don’t understand anything.”

I sat at the breakfast table and they all stared at me. All so sorrowful and sympathetic, what I really wanted to do was shout at them that they should look at me with normal faces again now.

“He left us when I was little!” I said to try to wipe that look off their faces. “He didn’t even call me on my birthday anymore or send me anything. I don’t give a shit, do you understand?” No idea why my voice cracked.

The funny thing was that I didn’t look at Janne at all. I looked at Marlon. As soon as I’d come to the table with my phone in hand my heart hadn’t skipped its usual beat at the sight of her. A pretty girl in a wheelchair. Marek our father is died . Now she was looking at me with the same affected look as the rest of them. I was back on the other side of the glass.

I got up and went across the lawn to the edge of the woods. I tried to make a call from there but the reception was no good. I kept dialing the number that the text had come from, it beeped, and then there was absolute silence on the line. Then I realized I should try from a different spot. As soon as I walked to a spot with better reception, the phone rang. It was Claudia.

I was relieved that her voice was halfway recognizable this time.