Julia Franck - The Blind Side of the Heart

We’d all die out otherwise, you know.

Helene stared through the glass at the street. What did the woman mean by we? The Nordic race, humanity itself? The girl whose tubes had been cut today was a healthy, cheerful girl. Only she was mute. The idea was to avoid her having deaf mute children. Why was it so bad for someone to speak in sign language instead of sounds? Why should that girl’s children be any unhappier than Peter, who didn’t get answers to all his questions either? Later, when the girl had come round, Helene had gone to see her and taken her an orange. She was not supposed to have done that; the oranges were meant for other patients. Helene had given it to the girl in secret. She had held the retractor, she had finished the stitching. If the surgeon had told her to make the incision, she would probably have cut the tubes herself. Helene felt the cool glass against her forehead.

Mother, aren’t you listening? Peter pinched her hand. He looked desperate, almost angry. Obviously he had been trying to attract her attention for some time.

I’m listening, said Helene. Peter was telling her something, saying the other children had throwed marbles.

Thrown, said Helene, thrown marbles, and she thought of that young girl again.

Thrown. Peter’s eyes were shining. He could talk very clearly when she reminded him. The girl would be alone in her bed in the ward now, with the thirty-eight other women patients. Had she been told what the operation on her was for? Helene could tell her next morning, she had to tell her. The girl mustn’t be left wondering later, she should at least know. But perhaps she would no longer be there in the morning.

Hungry, Peter was complaining now. It was time to get out of the tram. Helene remembered that she hadn’t done any shopping first thing in the morning. What shops were open before the beginning of her shift? Perhaps she could ring the grocer’s doorbell. His wife didn’t like it when people rang their bell in the evening, but often Helene had no other option if she hadn’t been shopping earlier, and today she had nothing to eat in the house.

She bought two eggs, quarter of a litre of milk and a whole pound of potatoes from the grocer’s wife. The potatoes were beginning to sprout shoots, but never mind. Helene was pleased to have them.

Don’t like tatoes, complained Peter as Helene put a plate of potatoes in front of him. She didn’t want to lose her temper, she didn’t want to shout at him and tell him he ought to be glad to have them, he’d better eat up. She’d rather say nothing.

Don’t like tatoes, said Peter again, letting a piece of potato fall off his little spoon and drop on the floor.

Helene snatched the spoon away from him and felt like banging it down on the table. She thought of her mother, the angry light in her eyes, her unpredictability. Helene laid the spoon gently on the table. If you’re not hungry, she said, keeping her voice down, you don’t have to eat. She took Peter’s wrist and led him over to the washbasin. He was crying as she washed him.

Eat rinje, whimpered Peter. Eat rinje. He pointed to the picture hanging over the chest of drawers. It showed a basket full of fruit in glowing colours. Did he mean the orange it showed? Should she have brought that orange from the hospital home for him? The girl needed the orange, Peter had potatoes.

Rinje! Peter was shouting now, deafening Helene. She bit her lip, she gritted her teeth, she didn’t want to lose patience, patience was all that mattered, it gave shape and form to life. Helene picked Peter up, turned the picture to the wall as she passed it and carried him to her bed.

Another day, she whispered. There’ll be an orange another day. Peter calmed down. He liked to be caressed. Helene stroked his forehead and pulled the blanket up over him.

Mother sing?

Helene knew she couldn’t sing well, she stroked him and shook her head. A woman in the hospital had taken her arm today with a bony old hand and told Helene she wished she would just let her die. Please, I just want to die. Go to sleep, Peterkin.

Sing, please sing! Peter didn’t want to close his eyes.

Perhaps she just had to make a bit of an effort. Helene would have liked to sing, she simply couldn’t. Could she think of a song? Mary and Joseph walked in a garden green , but Christmas was over long ago. Her voice was scratchy, the musical notes wouldn’t come. Peter was watching her. Helene closed her mouth.

Sing.

Helene shook her head. Her throat was hard, the opening too small, she had too little strength and her vocal cords were rigid and creaky. Was there some kind of premature ageing of the vocal cords, a medical condition, voice failure?

Auntie sing, Peter demanded now, trying to sit up again. Helene knew that Frau Kozinska had sometimes sung for Peter. She was often singing when Helene met her in the street or on the stairs too. Sometimes you could hear her voice up in their own apartment. Helene shook her head. Frau Kozinska liked to sing, she was always enviably cheerful, but she had left Peter alone too often, and when she was at home in the evening she was fond of the bottle. It was a blessing that he could go to nursery school now. The weeks when she was on night duty were difficult, however. Helene had to leave Peter alone; he slept most of the time. She told him before he went to bed that she would be back, and locked the door. When she came home in the morning the first thing she did was to fetch coal from the cellar, usually bringing a good load upstairs all at once, carrying the coal in a pannier on her back and buckets of briquettes and logs of wood in her left and right hands. Once upstairs she lit the stove. Peter would be asleep in her bed. She stroked his short fair hair until he stretched and wanted her to pick him up. Then she washed and dressed him, gave him something to eat and took him to the nursery school, where he wanted her to give him a hug, but she wouldn’t, because if she did they would not be able to part company. Home again, Helene saw to doing the laundry, mended the straps of Peter’s lederhosen; now that Baden had had to close his shop she couldn’t find a good cheap draper’s. Baden had disappeared, he’d been taken away in February with the rest of them, to the East, it was said. So Helene mended the straps of the lederhosen and found a coloured button to replace the artificial edelweiss flower he had lost. Then she slept for a few hours herself, added a couple of briquettes to the stove, fetched Peter from nursery school and took him home, gave him his supper and put him to bed, switched off the light and slipped out of the door. She had to hurry to catch the tram and reach the hospital in time for the night shift.

Every two weeks, when Helene had a day off, she took Peter’s hand and they went down to the harbour to look at the ships. Only very occasionally did a warship come in. Peter marvelled at the warships, and she showed him the flocks of birds.

Ducks, she said, pointing to the little formation in the air, five of them flying in a V-shape. Peter liked eating duck, but Helene couldn’t afford to buy it for him. Now and then Wilhelm sent money from Frankfurt. She didn’t want his money; it was hush money, and she didn’t need to be paid to keep her mouth shut. Every few months he sent her an envelope with money and a note from him. Dear Alice, buy the boy gloves and a cap, it might say, but Helene had knitted Peter gloves and a cap long ago. She took the money, put it in an envelope and wrote the address on it: Frau Selma Würsich, Tuchmacherstrasse 13, Bautzen, Lusatia. She sent off the letter without any sender’s name on it right to the end, until the day when she received a long, narrow package from Bautzen. The package contained the carved horn fish. The necklace that had once been in it wasn’t there. Perhaps money had been needed in Bautzen, so the rubies were sold, or perhaps the package had been opened in the post and someone liked the look of the necklace. There was a letter inside the fish. The letter itself stunned her, it smelled of Leontine and it was in her handwriting. Dear little Alice, it keeps on raining in Berlin but the frost has gone at last. I wonder if you are still living at the same address? Martha has been very ill for the last few years. You know her, she doesn’t complain and she didn’t want you to hear about it. We didn’t want to burden you with our news, and Martha wouldn’t let me write to tell you. She had to give up her work in the hospital. They’ve sent her to work in one of the new labour camps. My hands are tied. She could do with a husband now, or influential parents, some close relation. As soon as I’m able to visit her I must tell her that a letter arrived yesterday from the Charitable Foundation for Institutional Care, saying that your mother died of acute pneumonia a few weeks ago in Grossschweidnitz. I am truly sorry, although I know that many consider it a merciful death.