Julia Franck - The Blind Side of the Heart

Helene heard Wilhelm’s words, which seemed to her both stupid and bold. He was talking away at her. His air of superiority, the commanding tone of what he said, made her indignant. There were words that cancelled each other out. Helene felt that there was something suspect about his heroic courage, something fundamentally wrong. Next moment Helene was horrified by herself. Was she resentful? Wilhelm was cheerful, she’d be able to learn from him. Helene regretted her annoyance and her rejection of him. Wasn’t it just her grief for Carl, a woman’s mourning, as Wilhelm so kindly called it, that made her find it so hard to bear Wilhelm’s own cheerfulness and enjoyment of life?

What are you thinking of, Alice? The future’s at our feet, we won’t think just of ourselves, we’ll think of the common good, Alice, of the people, of our German land.

She wouldn’t be faint-hearted or bitter. It wasn’t life that had injured her feelings, there was no God wanting to make her atone. Wilhelm meant well by her and by himself, and she couldn’t grudge him that. How could she be so arrogant? After all, what he said was true, she had to come back to life, maybe nursing the sick didn’t help much there. But she lacked any real idea of what life should and could be. She would have to turn to someone else for that. And why not someone who meant well by her, who would be happy to hear her say yes, who wanted to rescue her? Wilhelm obviously knew what he wished for, what he preferred, and he was not just close to belief, he did believe. The word Germany was like a clarion call in his mouth. We. Who were we ? We were someone, but exactly who were we? She was sure she could learn to kiss again, and above all to come to know and like someone else’s odour, to open her lips and feel his tongue in her mouth, perhaps that was what it was all about.

Wilhelm paid court to Helene assiduously. It seemed as if every rejection by her simply lent him new force. He felt born to great deeds, most of all he wanted to rescue people and the first thing he wanted was to win this woman, whom he saw as shy and charming, to live with him as his wife.

I have two tickets for the Kroll Opera, we owe them to my good connections. You’d like to see those first television pictures, wouldn’t you?

But Helene was not to be won over. She was on night duty almost the whole week and there was no getting around it.

When Martha brought the news that Mariechen had been unable to prevent an incident in which the police had picked up and taken away a woman in the Kornmarkt who was first weeping and then raving wildly, Helene felt anxious. Leontine telephoned Bautzen, first speaking to Mariechen, then to the hospital and finally to the health authority. She learned that Selma Würsich had been taken to Schloss Sonnenstein in Pirna, where they would try to find out just what was wrong with her and use new techniques to decide whether it was hereditary.

Helene packed her things and Wilhelm saw that his moment had come. He wouldn’t let her go on her own, he said, she needed him, she must know that.

In the train, Wilhelm sat opposite Helene. She noticed how confidently he looked at her. He had beautiful eyes, really beautiful. How long was it since she had last seen her mother, ten years, eleven? Helene was afraid she might not recognize her, wondered what she would look like and whether her mother in turn would recognize her. Wilhelm took her hand. She bowed her head and laid her face against his hand. How warm it was. She felt it was a gift that he was with her. She kissed his hand.

My brave Alice, he said. She heard the tenderness in his words, yet she didn’t feel as if they referred to her.

Brave? I’m not brave. She shook her head. I’m terribly frightened.

Now he put both hands on her shoulders and drew her head close to his chest, so that she almost slipped out of her seat. My sweet girl, I know, he said, and she felt his mouth on her forehead. But you don’t have to keep contradicting me. You’re going there and that’s brave.

Another daughter would have gone years ago, another daughter wouldn’t have left her mother in the first place.

There was nothing you could do for her. Wilhelm stroked Helene’s hair. He smelled not unpleasant, almost familiar. Helene guessed, knew, that his words were meant to be comforting. She pressed close to him. What was there in Wilhelm that she could like? Maybe the fact that someone would put up with her.

Only a special permit from the public health authority, for which Leontine had applied in Pirna by way of Bautzen, allowed Helene this visit to her mother.

The hospital grounds were extensive and, but for the high fences, you might have thought that centuries ago this was a royal palace where kings lived, enjoying the view. A delightful landscape stretched out before them at the place where the Wesenitz flowed into the Elbe from the north and the Gottleuba joined it from the south. There was something improbable about the bright sunshine and loud birdsong. Was this where her mother was in safe keeping as a mental patient?

A male nurse led Helene and Wilhelm up some stairs and down a long corridor. Barred doors were opened and locked again after them. The visitors’ room was at the far end of this wing.

Helene’s mother was sitting on the edge of a bench, wearing a nightdress. Her hair was completely silver now, but otherwise she looked as she always had, not a day older. When Helene came in she turned her head to her and said: I told you so, didn’t I? I said you’d be looking after me. But first get me out of here, those hands of theirs churn up my guts. Although there’s nothing grafted in me, no pears bred from an apple stock. Nothing mixed there. The doctor says I have children. I convinced him that he was wrong. Hatched out and flown the nest. One doesn’t have children like that. They should grow from the head, from here to there. Helene’s mother struck first her forehead and then the back of her head with the flat of her hand. Shaken out, as simple as that.

Helene went up to her mother and took one of her cool hands. Just skin and bone. The old skin felt soft, brittle on the outside but soft and smooth on the palms.

No physical contact. The male nurse standing at the door and keeping an eye on the visitors looked as if he was going to come closer.

Don’t you have any women nurses here? cried Helene, and took fright at the volume of her own voice.

Yes, there are women nurses too, but a little extra strength is needed to handle some patients, know what I mean?

It could be I’d scratch, it could be I’d bite, it could be I’d scratch them and bite them all night , chanted Helene’s mother in the voice of a young girl.

I’ve brought you something. Helene opened her bag. A hairbrush and a mirror.

Give those to me, please. The male nurse held out his hand. I’ll be happy to take them and keep them safe. For reasons of protection and security the patients may not have any possessions of their own here.

But Helene’s mother had already picked up the brush and was beginning to tidy her hair with it. Between the mountain and the vale, upon the grass so green, two hares hopped nimbly at their ease, the finest ever seen . She sang unerringly, warbling like the girl she had once been.

The male nurse stamped his foot angrily. This was too much for him.

God only knows where she gets all those songs from. He reached for the brush and snatched it from Helene’s mother’s hand. In the struggle, the mirror slipped off her lap and broke as it hit the ground. And that too, cried the nurse, picking up the mirror frame and the pieces of glass from the floor. No sooner had he snatched the brush and retrieved the mirror than Helene’s mother let herself slip off the bench to the floor. She was laughing, showing black gaps in her mouth. Helene was horrified to see the missing teeth. Her mother laughed until her laughter gurgled in her throat, and couldn’t calm down.