Julia Franck - The Blind Side of the Heart

Helene decided not to wait any longer. She knew that Carl wasn’t going to come now.

Perhaps they had misunderstood each other and he had meant a different time? But she knew perfectly well that he had said one o’clock. Wasn’t it possible that he had meant something else? Maybe another place? They had often met on this corner; maybe he had wanted to meet somewhere else today and mentioned the café by mistake, but with another one in mind? Helene didn’t know where to turn, where to go; she felt afraid, although she told herself there was nothing to fear. She went to a kiosk and bought cigarettes. It was the first time she had ever bought any for herself. She really needed the money for the cobbler, but she couldn’t think about going to the cobbler now, she wanted to smoke a cigarette. She didn’t have a cigarette holder; she’d have to smoke without one. She broke two matches before she managed to light the cigarette. A little piece of tobacco came adrift, tasting bitter on her tongue. It wasn’t easy to hold the cigarette in gloved fingers. Helene didn’t know which way to look now. She was standing in the middle of a busy crowd of people whose lunch break was over and who were hurrying back to work. Some of them might have appointments to keep, and had to run to the station and take a train going west.

The wind blew in her face, a west wind from the direction of the Memorial Church. Helene tried breathing deeply to inhale the smoke. South, east, north. But before she could draw the smoke into her lungs her bronchial tubes closed against it and she had a coughing fit. So she puffed the cigarette instead. Little clouds of smoke came out of her mouth. The rather sour, bitter taste of it made her feel pleasantly light-headed. She took short, quick puffs, blowing out her cheeks as far as she could, and finally letting the cigarette end fall in the slush at her feet, where it went out at once.

Helene didn’t know where to go in search of Carl now. She walked down Tauentzienstrasse to Nürnberger Strasse, round several blocks, past the school where she had taken her evening classes — they had finished months ago now — and she did not turn into Geisbergstrasse until dusk was falling. She could see the black roof of their building from the other side of the square; no light, however faint, showed in their attic room.

All the same, she went up to make sure that no one had come in. The door was locked, the room itself exactly as they had left it in the morning. Helene didn’t take off her coat. She went downstairs again, past the young man who lived on the third floor and kept forgetting his keys, so that he often had to sit outside the landlady’s apartment with a stack of papers, perhaps revising a stage play or the scenario of a film, until someone came to let him in. He generally had a pen in his hand and was scribbling something in the margin of the typewritten pages. Helene went down Bayreuther Strasse to Wittenbergplatz, over Ansbacher Strasse and back to Geisbergstrasse, to Viktoria-Luise-Platz, up to the attic room and back down to the street again. The third-floor tenant must have been let into his room by now.

Helene had stopped wondering why Carl had wanted to speak to her so urgently in the middle of the day; she was just hoping he would appear and they could fall into each other’s arms. Something must have detained him. Helene smoked a second cigarette, then a third as she walked around the streets for the third time, and in the end she had smoked eight. She felt very sick. She wasn’t hungry at all.

She told herself she wanted to be home when he returned. They could eat together when he arrived, he would put his hand against her cheek — oh, if only he would come home.

She took off her boots. She didn’t want to disturb the landlady by asking for hot water. So she sat on the bed, wrapped the blanket round her cold feet and tried to read the new book that Carl had brought her two days ago, but she couldn’t get beyond the first poem in the volume. She read it again and again, read each line several times, and said the last three lines out loud to herself: And then I thought I saw/you, far off, drain the glass /from which I drank before . Then she began again at the beginning: After that hour has passed/What next, what news is heard? /Those friends who went there last/Will send no word. Helene understood only a fraction of what the poem said, her mind was somewhere else, half still in her thoughts, half closed off entirely while her heart beat fast and her eyes narrowed. It was as if, as she repeatedly read the lines of verse, some certainty were forcing itself upon her, taking her over. At one point Helene stood up. She was freezing. There was a basket under the washstand and Carl’s vest, ready for washing, hung over the edge of it. She put it on next to her skin and his pyjamas over it. Overnight she counted the time by the distant chiming of clocks. When the first sounds could be heard stirring in the house in the morning twilight she stayed sitting on the bed by the wall, thinking: something has to happen now to make you get up, get washed and dressed. See you tomorrow, the pharmacist had said yesterday. She couldn’t keep him waiting. Helene heard steps on the stairs, their stairs, the last flight that led only to the attic. There was a soft knock on the door. Helene knew that Carl wasn’t forgetful, he always had his key on him; she didn’t want to open the door. The knocking grew louder. Helene looked at the door. Her heart was thudding, exhausted with beating all night long. Helene knew that she had no choice: she must stand up, she stood up; she must go to the door, she went to the door; she must open the door, she opened it.

The landlady stood outside, still in her dressing gown. Fräulein Helene, she said, looking not at Helene but at the floor. Helene held on to the doorknob; she was so weak that the floor seemed to move and rise, turn round, sway back and forth. The landlady was in some difficulty. Well, many people found it hard to talk early in the morning. My telephone rang, she said, Professor Wertheimer told me his son wouldn’t be coming back, he said he’d had an accident.

Which son? thought Helene.

She knew it was Carl who had had the accident, she had guessed it even before she heard the steps on the stairs and had to open the door. But which son, which son was the landlady talking about now? Helene said: Yes. She didn’t want to move her head unnecessarily, no nodding it, no tilting it, after all, if it turned it might fall off her shoulders.

I asked Professor Wertheimer if you’d been told yet. He said he didn’t think you could have been. I told him I would do it, I could go up to you. Professor Wertheimer said he didn’t know where you lived, but if I could make sure you were told that would be good. He asked me if I had your address. I said I’d have to go and look. I suppose he still doesn’t know you’ve been living here?

Helene clung to the doorknob with both hands.

He’s dead. The landlady must be saying that just in case the message had been misunderstood. That’s what I had to tell you.

Helene took a deep breath; some time she’d have to breathe out again. Yes. Still holding the knob tight in both hands, she closed the door until the latch snapped into place.

If there’s anything I can do for you, Helene, she heard the landlady saying on the other side of the door, will you let me know?

Helene did not answer. She sat down on the bed and took the book on to her lap; she kept blinking: I knew your glance, your eyes, /And deep there, it still seems, /Our fate, our joys arise, /Our love, our dreams. She was reading out loud now, as if she were reading to someone and this was the only way the poem could get out of her. She could not raise or lower her voice even slightly. Helene read the poem through to the end again one last time. The night was over. Then she closed the book and put it on the desk. Helene opened the window. Cold air streamed in. The first streaks of light as day dawned were showing in the sky. There was a pale and delicate tinge of pink among them. She mustn’t take off his vest. Helene washed and put her dress on again. Her shoes were still wet; she had forgotten to stuff them with newspaper. Her coat smelled of yesterday’s smoke.