Julia Franck - The Blind Side of the Heart

The train hissed and moved ponderously out of Dresden station. The rumble of the engine was so deafening that Helene and Martha didn’t talk to each other. Travellers were still pushing and shoving in the corridor, looking for their compartments and their seats. Helene and Martha had been settled in their own velvet-upholstered seats for some time. In all the excitement they had omitted to take off their coats and gloves, but they leaned forward and looked sideways so as not to miss anything that could be seen through the window. They felt sure that a new life was beginning with these elegant seats, this window, this train, a life that would have nothing to do with Bautzen any more, a life that was to make them forget these last weeks with their mother now scolding, now drowsing. On the left, cranes towered to the sky. They must belong to the harbour and the docks, which could not be seen from the train. Mariechen would certainly take good care of Mother; when they said goodbye Martha and Helene had promised to send her enough money on the first of every month. What else was the rent money from Breslau for? Together, they had decided that Mariechen would stay in Tuchmacherstrasse with Mother for the time being. Mariechen was grateful to them for this suggestion. She probably wouldn’t have known where else to go in her old age, after spending twenty-seven years in the service of the Würsich family.

The last buildings in the Old Town were passing by. The train was crossing the Marienbrücke so slowly that you could have walked along beside it. The Elbe meadows were still more black than green; the Elbe itself was in spate, but hardly rose above its banks here in the city. A barge with a load of coal made its way slowly against the current. Helene wondered if it would go as far as Pirna. More houses, streets, squares, the train went through a small station. It was some time before the buildings of the city had all passed by, and the low-built houses and gardens of the suburbs were also behind them. Helene thought she saw the first of the Lusatian Hills rising in the distance. She felt happy excitement and relief when they too disappeared from view, and the train was finally puffing through meadows, woods and fields. Mist hung over the arable fields that they were passing, hardly any green yet showed that spring was on its way, but now and then the sun broke through the hovering mist.

It seemed to Helene as if they had been on their way for weeks. She opened the picnic prepared for them by the professor’s wife and offered Martha something to eat. They ate the sandwiches with boiled sausage, which tasted like blood sausage and had the same fine consistency, devouring the bread and its dark-red filling as if they hadn’t had anything to eat for years, as if blood sausage tasted wonderful. With the sandwiches they drank the tea that they had brought in a flask with a wickerwork cover. Later they felt tired, and their eyes closed even before the train stopped at the next station.

When they woke up again, other travellers were already standing at the windows and out in the corridor. The train’s entry into the city, and soon afterwards into Anhalt Station, brought soft cries of amazement from the girls. Who could have imagined Berlin, its size, all the passers-by, the bicycles, hackney carriages and motor cars? After Dresden station, Martha and Helene had thought they were well prepared for the metropolis, but they held each other’s chilly, sweating hands tight. The deafening noise of the station concourse came in through the open windows. The travellers crowded out of their compartments into the corridor and made for the doors. Outside, Helene could hear the whistling and shouting of the porters, already calling and offering their services out on the platform. Panic seized the girls; they were afraid they wouldn’t get out of the train in time. Martha stumbled as she climbed down and caught her foot in the skirts of her coat, so that she half slipped and half fell off the last step to the platform. She landed on all fours. Helene couldn’t help laughing and was ashamed of herself. She clenched her fist and bit her glove. Next moment she took the handhold by the door herself, accepted an elderly gentleman’s helping hand, and quickly climbed out of the train. She and the elderly gentleman helped Martha up. The station was full of people, some of whom had come to meet their nearest and dearest from the train, but there were also many traders and young women going up and down offering everything from newspapers to flowers to shoe-cleaning for sale, all of them items which Martha and Helene realized only now that they lacked. At the same time they looked at each other, and down at their dirty shoes, where the Saxon soil of the ploughed field out of which they had pushed the professor’s car still clung. And their hands were empty — they ought to have thought before now of taking their aunt a present. Hadn’t the physicist Röntgen died only the other day? Trying to think of small talk, Helene was searching her memory for world news that she had heard recently. She seldom took her chance of reading any of the newspapers left lying around the hospital. What did she and Martha know of the way of the world in general and Berlin in particular? Perhaps a little bunch of daffodils? Were those real tulips? Helene had never seen tulips so tall and slender.

As Helene tried and failed to pin down any of her fleeting thoughts — they ought to have started printing banknotes in good time, it occurred to her, and then: what nonsense! Then again: who was Cuno? President of the Reich or Chancellor? Then she thought of those fine-sounding names again: Thyssen and France and cash, cash, cash; printing money would have been just the thing, whether it was legal or not. Come on, she told Martha, who was still disentangling her coat and tucking her hair under her hat. She hoped their trunk was still there.

Together, the sisters hurried along the platform to the luggage van. A queue had formed outside it. The girls kept looking over their shoulders. Their aunt had suggested in her last letter that they should take a charabanc or the tram to reach her apartment in Achenbachstrasse. But wasn’t it possible that in spite of this advice she would come to the station to meet them herself?

Do you think Aunt Fanny will recognize us?

She’ll have to. Martha was holding the luggage voucher ready, already counting out the right money, although there was still a dense line of people waiting in front of them.

It won’t be difficult with you. Helene scrutinized Martha. You look like Mother.

The question is whether Aunt Fanny can see that — or wants to. Perhaps she doesn’t remember what her cousin looked like?

She won’t have a photograph of Mother. Mother has only one from before we were born, that photo of her wedding.

Has? Martha smiled. She had it, rather. At least I brought the photo with me. We want a souvenir, don’t we?

A souvenir? Helene looked at Martha blankly. She thought of saying: Not me, I don’t, but then decided not to.

Need a place to stay? Nice hostel, young ladies? Someone was plucking at Helene’s coat from behind. Or a private room with a landlady? Helene turned. A young man in shabby clothes stood behind her.

Running water and electric light? a second man asked, pushing the first aside.

I can tell you a good place. Those hostels for strangers are full of lice, and who can afford a hotel? You just come with me! An elderly woman took Helene’s arm.

Let go! Helene’s voice cracked with alarm. No thank you, no thank you, we don’t need anywhere, Martha was saying to all the people crowding around them.

We have an aunt in Berlin, Helene added, and now she did up the top button of her coat.

I’m sure they didn’t get on because Aunt Fanny thought she’d risen higher in the world than Mother, Martha whispered in Helene’s ear. She had, too!