Julia Franck - The Blind Side of the Heart

Well, that! See that funny kind of crease? And my coat’s all over bits of fuzz. Would you deal with it, please?

Of course, said Helene, and taking the clothes brush out of the console table she brushed Wilhelm’s coat.

The arms too. Not so hard, child, this is fine fabric.

At last they were able to set off. Helene’s knickers were wet. Wilhelm was flowing out of her even as he walked to the car about three metres ahead of her. Perhaps there was some blood too. Her periods had been back for the last three months and she was due again tomorrow, or maybe even today.

The opening of the Reich autobahn was an endless ceremony full of speeches and commendations, vows made in the name of the future, of Germany and its Führer. Heil. Helene thought everyone near her must be surprised by the reek of sperm clinging to her. Wilhelm’s sperm. There were days when she felt the smell of it was like a brand on her. Obviously Wilhelm didn’t notice anything. He stretched out his arm and stood motionless beside her for hours with his back very straight. On this day his greatest achievement so far was on show to the public. All the workers were thanked, including those who had risked or lost their lives. No one said exactly how they had lost them. One might have fallen off a bridge, another could have been run over by a steamroller. Helene imagined the different possible kinds of death. In any case, theirs had been heroic deaths, just as the building of the whole road was heroic. A reference to the drop in the unemployment figures was intended to emphasize the claim that, among other achievements, the building of this road and the other autobahns that were to follow was a triumphantly successful way of tackling unemployment in Germany. When Wilhelm stepped forward to be honoured, he did not glance back at Helene; presumably the many pats on the back he received from his colleagues prevented him. Wilhelm shook hands, stretched his arm towards the sky and looked around him with a certain pride. His excitement seemed so great that he forgot to smile. Or perhaps the place and the occasion seemed to him too sacred for anyone to venture a smile. He expressed his thanks in a firm voice, he thanked everyone, from the German Fatherland to the secretary of the first German Ladies’ Automobile Club. Heil, Heil, Heil. Everyone had earned a Heil. Unlike the six gentlemen who had been commended and honoured before him, he had not seen and then exploited the tiny loophole left available for him to thank his wife. Perhaps it was because they had no children. After all, the speakers before him could thank their whole families for providing special support in the recent past.

Before the guests invited to the lunch celebrating the occasion set off in a convoy, Helene left, like most of the other wives. After all, she had to prepare supper and do the laundry. As he said goodbye to her, Wilhelm said he hoped to be home by six, but if he didn’t get back in time for supper she wasn’t to wait for him. He might well be late on a day like this.

Helene waited all the same. She had made pearl barley soup with carrots and bacon, a favourite of Wilhelm’s, specially for today. The potatoes grew cold, fresh liver and onions lay beside the stove ready for frying. Helene herself hated pearl barley and liver, she simply could not get any of those dishes down, so there was no point, she thought, in eating any supper herself later in the evening. She wrote two letters to Berlin: one to Martha alias Elsa, one to Leontine asking why there was no word from Martha. Then she wrote a third letter, to Bautzen. It would bear the Stettin postmark, but as sender’s name she gave only her first name, Helene, written in a childish scrawl so that the postman might think it was just love and kisses from a little girl and suspect nothing. She had not yet told her mother and Mariechen that she was married and now had a new surname. Martha and Leontine had agreed with her that such news might agitate her mother unnecessarily. So Helene wrote to say she was well and had moved to Stettin for professional reasons, to look for a job here since she couldn’t find one in Berlin at the moment. She asked how her mother was and said any reply should be sent to Fanny’s address. Helene opened Wilhelm’s desk and took out the cash box. She knew he didn’t like her to go to his cash box on her own, but once, three months ago, she had asked him for some money for her mother and Wilhelm had just looked at her blankly. After all, he didn’t know these people, he said, and he didn’t suppose that she still wanted to call them relations of hers. So then she knew that he wasn’t going to give her anything. It might be because of maladministration or possible sharp practice, Helene didn’t know the precise reasons, but the income from Breslau had dried up. Finally Martha had said she could send their mother money only every three months; there simply wasn’t enough to go round. Mariechen had written asking for something in kind; she needed hard soap and foodstuffs, dried food would be useful, peas, fruits, oats and coffee, not to mention material for clothes. Helene took a ten-mark note out of the box; she hesitated; another ten-mark note lay temptingly on top of a third. But Wilhelm counted his money. She would have to think of a credible story to account for the absence of this one banknote. The simplest lie was to say she had lost the housekeeping money that he had counted out and given her the evening before. But Helene had claimed to have lost money once before. She took the banknote, put it in the letter to Bautzen and stuck down the envelope. Whether and exactly where the money would arrive was another question. Helene didn’t even know where her last letter had ended up.

She did some sewing and ironing, and starched Wilhelm’s collars, before going to bed just before midnight. Wilhelm came home at four in the morning. Without turning on the light he dropped on the bed beside Helene, fully dressed, and snored peacefully. Helene could distinguish between his various snores; there was the hoarse, light snoring of the carefree Wilhelm, there was the defiant snoring of the hard-working Wilhelm who had not yet had his money’s worth, every snore was different and told Helene what mood Wilhelm was in. Helene let him snore; she thought of her sister and worried a little. After all, it could be that Martha wasn’t well. Perhaps something had happened to her and Leontine, and no one had told Helene about it because it wasn’t officially known that Martha had a sister, let alone what her name was.

After an hour Wilhelm’s snoring became disturbed. Then it suddenly stopped and he got up and went out on to the landing. When he came back, Helene lay with her back to him and listened for the snoring to begin again. But it didn’t. Instead she suddenly felt Wilhelm’s hand on her waist. Helene turned to him. A smell of beer and schnapps and sweet perfume wafted into her face. She had smelled it before, but not as strongly as this.

What a great day for you. You must be relieved. Helene placed her hand on the back of Wilhelm’s neck. The hair shaved very short there felt strange.

Oh, relieved, well, this is where it all begins, child. Wilhelm couldn’t articulate clearly. He pushed his hand between Helene’s legs and squeezed her labia with his fingers. Come on, he said as she tried to push his hand away, come on, little animal, you sweet little cunt, come on. He pressed Helene’s arms aside and turned her body over. She resisted, which aroused him, perhaps he thought she did it on purpose to entice him and send him crazy. What an arse, he said. Helene flinched.

Every goddam woman, he had once said, thinks she can see into people’s hearts, but he could see into her vulva, he could look deep into her vagina, the deepest orifice of her body, the juiciest, the orifice that was all his, one that she herself could never see, or not so directly. It was possible that Wilhelm and his colleagues had been with a tart just now. Helene had smelled that flowery perfume. Even a mirror allowed a woman only a glimpse of it. She could never be mistress of the sight of it. Let her look into hearts as much as she liked.