Julia Franck - The Blind Side of the Heart

Alice, when is it due? Wilhelm was in a good mood. Well pleased with himself, he looked round for Helene, who was putting the last steaming potatoes in a dish and setting it down on the table.

In six weeks’ time. Helene wiped her hands on her apron and took the spoon to help the men to potatoes.

Six weeks, as soon as that? It wasn’t clear whether Wilhelm was really surprised or putting on an act. How time flies!

And you’re applying for posts in Berlin? His older colleague sounded startled. Helene knew nothing about Wilhelm’s making any such application.

These days people are needed everywhere, Königsberg, Berlin, Frankfurt. Wilhelm drank to his colleagues. We’ll soon be through with Pölitz, then we’ll have to see what’s to be done next.

Right, said his younger colleague and drank some beer.

Helene served Wilhelm’s potatoes last. They were still steaming; perhaps it was too cold in the kitchen. She’d have to add coal to the stove. Since she had been expecting her baby Helene didn’t feel the cold as she used to, and was slow to notice when the apartment was getting chilly.

Never mind that, Alice, we can look after ourselves. You can leave us now. Wilhelm rubbed his hands above his steaming plate.

It was true, the men had their food and Wilhelm knew where the beer was. He could get up himself to find fresh supplies. As Helene was leaving the kitchen she heard him say to his friends: Do you two know the one about Renate-Rosalinde with the barbed-wire fence?

His colleagues were roaring with laughter before Wilhelm could go on.

She asks the holidaymaker: What do you think of my new dress? Fabulous, says the lance-corporal, reminds me of a barbed-wire fence.

The men roared again. Helene put up the ironing board in the bedroom next door.

Barbed-wire fence, says our beauty, how do you mean? Why, says the lance-corporal, grinning and rolling his eyes, it protects the front without keeping it out of sight.

More laughter. Helene heard bottles clinking, and knocking on the table. Very neat reply, said one of his colleagues, probably the older one.

Wilhelm’s laughter outdid the mirth of the others.

Helene took the shirt that Wilhelm would be wearing next day out of the basket and ironed it. A few weeks earlier Wilhelm had given her an electric iron for her birthday. The electric iron was amazingly light in weight. Helene could glide it over the fabric so quickly that she had to tell herself to iron more slowly. There was still loud laughter next door and Helene kept hearing the clink of bottles. The child inside her was kicking, it struck a rib on the right, her liver hurt, and Helene put a hand to her belly to feel how hard the bump inside it was. It was probably the coccyx there, turning with difficulty from left to right, with the bump pressing against her abdominal wall. The little head inside her sometimes rested on her bladder so painfully that she kept having to go out to the lavatory on the landing. Wilhelm didn’t like her to keep using the chamber pot in the night, so she had to go out to relieve herself. He must find the slow trickle into which her flow of urine had turned in the last few weeks intolerable; perhaps she disgusted him now. Since their altercation in the spring, Wilhelm hadn’t touched her again, not once. At first Helene thought he was just angry and his desire would revive. She knew him, she knew only too well how often that desire, that unassuageable lust overcame him. But as days and weeks passed by, she realized it was not directed at her any more. Helene seldom asked herself whether it was because she was pregnant and he didn’t want to sleep with a pregnant woman, not wishing to disturb the child in her and feeling increasing distaste for her body, or whether it was simply that the outcome of his lust, the awareness that a child had been conceived, filled him with alarm and dismay. Once, towards morning, she had woken to hear his shallow breathing on the other side of the bed in the dark. His blanket was moving rhythmically, until a point came when the hint of a high squeal could be heard as he let out his breath. Helene had pretended to be asleep, and it was not the only time she had heard him doing that during the night. She didn’t feel sorry for him, nor was she disappointed. A pleasant indifference towards her husband had taken hold of Helene. On other nights he stayed out very late, and she smelled sweet perfume so strongly when he staggered into the bedroom early in the morning, drunk, and collapsed on the bed, that she knew he had been with another woman. She pretended to be asleep on those nights too. It was as well for them to leave each other in peace. In the daytime, when Helene came back from shopping, had cleaned the apartment and put the washing to soak and then to boil, she liked to read for half an hour. Everyone needs a break now and then, she told herself. She was reading a book by a young man who had been to a training school for servants in Berlin. It was called Institute Benjamenta . Think well, mean well. The total eradication of your own will was the idea of the training, what a wonderful idea. Helene often had to laugh out loud to herself. She had hardly ever found a book so entertaining. When she laughed her belly went firm and hard, her uterus contracted, its huge muscle protected the baby from any violent movement. She had borrowed the book from the Rosengarten library, where she wasn’t supposed to go, because there were no books from this particular publisher now in the People’s Library. Helene thought of Leontine’s dark and magical smile, the sweet tenderness of Carl’s lips, his eyes, his body. It wasn’t so easy to reach past her big belly with her arm, nor could she, as she had once liked to do, put a pillow between her thighs, lie on her stomach, and try to make those movements; her belly was too big for her to lie on it, so now Helene just stroked herself and thought of nothing.

In the middle of the night Helene was woken by a contraction. Wilhelm was spending November in Königsberg, where he had business: plans and discussions about major building projects. The contraction came again, and her belly hardened. Often a hot bath would either halt or accelerate a baby’s birth. Helene boiled water and poured it into the big zinc tub; usually only Wilhelm took an occasional bath there. Helene climbed into the tub and waited. The pains were coming more often now. She tried to feel herself, but her arm couldn’t reach far enough round her belly and her hand couldn’t go deep enough into her vagina, all she could feel was the soft, open flesh. Helene counted the intervals: every eight minutes, every seven minutes, then every eight minutes again. She poured in more hot water. Seven minutes, seven and a half, six minutes. The intervals were getting shorter now. Helene got out of the tub and dried herself. She knew where the hospital was. She had often gone there to try to apply for a job, with a forged letter giving Wilhelm’s permission in her pocket; she had worked on imitating his handwriting. Although Wilhelm had told her she had better think about providing for her child, he didn’t want her taking a permanent post while she was pregnant. Sooner or later he would have found out, he might have hauled her out of the hospital by her ears. He had once pulled her ear really hard when he was in a fury because she had overlooked a crease in his shirt, had taken her earlobe between his fingers and dragged her out of the kitchen and into the bedroom. Another contraction; they were so painful now that Helene bent over her tense belly. She took Carl’s vest out of the cupboard. She had managed to keep it there so long, unnoticed by Wilhelm, only because he left it to her to put out his clothes for him. She put on Carl’s vest. It stretched over her belly and rode up. You had to breathe too, in spite of the labour pains, breathe deeply. She put on long johns, a pain, suspender belt that had to go under the bulge, a pain, stockings, a pain, her dress on top. She mustn’t forget her certificate of Aryan descent and family records; she took both documents from Wilhelm’s desk. She took some money too. It was a freezing night, the pavements were icy, and Helene had to take care not to lose her balance and slip. She had to stop every few metres as she walked along the empty street. Breathe, breathe in deeply. What did this pain matter? Helene laughed, the pain would end, her child was going to be born today, her little one, her little girl. Helene went on, stopped again. It seemed to her that the baby’s head was already coming down between her thighs; she could hardly move if she kept her legs closed. Breathe deeply and go on. Legs wide apart, Helene trudged over the ice.