Julia Franck - The Blind Side of the Heart

The sirens of the big ships sounded a deep note, making your insides vibrate. Helene could feel the humming right to the soles of her feet. Peter asked his mother where the ship’s guns were. The letter was signed, in Leontine’s handwriting: With love from your sister Elsa. As a postscript, she had added the following note: Do you remember our old neighbour Fanny? She has been taken away. An Obergruppenführer lives in her apartment now, with his wife and three nice children. Helene knew what the letter meant. Leontine had to cover up her tracks or both their lives would be in danger, and had chosen the only possible words to describe that monstrous event. She had enclosed some dried rose petals in the letter. They fell out when Helene opened it. Helene wanted to weep, but she couldn’t. Something prevented her; she couldn’t take in what she had read. The petals gave off a sweet scent, or perhaps it was just a trace of Leontine’s perfume. Her real name must not be dangerously connected with Martha, Helene or any other such person. Was Leontine still working at the hospital? Did she have to cut Fallopian tubes and remove ovaries? Did they want to send her too to a field hospital? After all, Leontine was divorced now, she had no children, they could send her anywhere they liked, however many names she adopted: Leo, Elsa, Abelard even. Helene would always have known her firm, swift handwriting again; it had left its mark on her. A great longing came over Helene and made her feel dizzy. She was perspiring.

Guns? Peter tugged impatiently at his mother’s sleeve. Where’s the guns? Helene didn’t know.

Are you sad? Peter looked up at his mother.

Helene shook her head. It’s the wind, she said. Come on, let’s go to the railway station and look at the trains. Helene couldn’t help thinking what it would be like if she simply bought a ticket and went to Berlin with Peter. It ought to be possible to find Leontine. It must be possible. But who knew how dangerous that might be?

The railway station lay on the river Oder just below the city. The trains were coming in and out. Wind blew over the platform, bringing tears to many eyes. They had sat down on a bench and were holding hands. There was a new nurse at the hospital, Ida Fiebinger, who came from Bautzen. Helene had felt strange when she first heard Ida Fiebinger speaking, the melody of the local accent, the closed vowels, the slow lilt of the sentences. Helene kept seeking Ida out. One day Nurse Ida said, when the stormy wind had blown down a tree in the hospital yard: When the wind doesn’t know /where it can blow, /over Budissin it will go , using one of the dialect words for Bautzen. Helene was astonished when she heard it and suppressed a smile with difficulty. It was so long since she had heard that old saying.

Peter said he was cold, he wanted to go home. Helene consoled him and said let them wait for one more train. Once, when the nurses were standing around with their plates in the hospital canteen at lunch, Nurse Ida had turned in mid-sentence to Helene and said: Now I know why I always feel as if I knew you. You’re from Bautzen. Helene had calmly put down her fork, feeling the blood come to her face so suddenly that she had to pretend she had a violent coughing fit. Excuse me, she said. I’m sure you know my uncle, Ida added eagerly, he was a well-known judge in Bautzen until he retired.

Helene shook her head. No, she made haste to say, I’m from Dresden. I once passed through Bautzen on a visit. Isn’t there a leaning tower there? Nurse Ida looked at Helene with disappointment and a little disbelief, but definitely disappointed. You passed through? On my way to Breslau, claimed Helene, fervently hoping that none of the nurses here came from Breslau and would want to talk to her about a city she didn’t know at all. Since then Helene had several times felt Nurse Ida’s enquiring gaze resting on her. The wind howled and hummed around the telegraph poles. Helene looked over the tracks to the locomotive. Only a little vapour still rose from its funnel. It looked as if it wouldn’t be leaving the station today. No one had arrived, and Helene would not buy a ticket. She stood up, Peter held her hand tightly, and they walked up the steps and back into the city in silence.

Helene had not expected Wilhelm to visit her again, least of all during the summer when Peter was starting real school. She had cleaned the apartment, repainted the wall by the kitchen window where rain had come in; she had stuck down the bedroom wallpaper and put nails into the wobbly chair until it stood steady at the kitchen table, and finally she had washed the curtains, cleaned the windows and bought a bunch of cosmos flowers. Everything must be spick and span when Wilhelm arrived. She didn’t want him shaking his head and thinking that she couldn’t manage with the child on her own. With Peter’s help, she carried the sofa borrowed from their old next-door neighbours into their kitchen. She told Peter he would probably have to sleep on the sofa that week. But then Wilhelm said he would sleep on the sofa himself, so Peter could stay in her bed. Wilhelm said he was on leave. He had come in a civilian suit, so Helene didn’t really know whether he was in the army or not. He made a secret of it. He was not the sort to wriggle out of fighting; his proud bearing suggested to Helene that he had an important job in strategy or some such thing. And his short letters every few months, containing money, always came from Frankfurt or Berlin. Recently she had been putting the money in a thick woollen stocking, which she hid at the very bottom of her work basket. Once, when Peter had hurt his knee, was crying and wanted a bandage, and Helene told him that his graze would dry better exposed to the air, Wilhelm interrupted her, tapping the boy on the back of the neck. Don’t cry, Peter. And remember this, men are there to kill and women are there to heal their wounds. Peter had tilted his head back and looked up to his father. Perhaps there was a smile? But no, his father’s gaze was serious.

Wilhelm was looking well, strong and cheerful, bursting with health. His snores at night were loud and contented; Helene couldn’t get a wink of sleep. His collars were clean, his shirts ironed, he carried the photograph of a smiling woman in his wallet. When Helene had taken his trousers to wash them, the wallet fell into her hands. It was none of her business; she asked him no questions, and didn’t want to be asked any herself. On the fourth morning of his visit Wilhelm said that on Sunday, before he went back, he was going to take the boy on a little expedition to Velten. His brother might come from Gelbensande too. Helene had never met Wilhelm’s brother and to this day she didn’t know if he was the person who had got hold of her documents for her. Peter put his arms round his mother’s waist; he didn’t want to go without her. But his father told him not to be a sissy; a boy must go on a journey without his mother some time or other. Velten? Wilhelm thought he saw distrust in Helene’s eyes.

Don’t worry, he said, half laughing, half setting her right. I’ll bring the boy back to you. Even on leave you sometimes have to meet colleagues. Wilhelm had left his car in Frankfurt, so father and son went by train. It was a great day for Peter; this would be his first train ride. Wilhelm probably wanted to cut short the time he spent with his wife by going on this little expedition with Peter in the second half of his week’s leave. Or perhaps the trip was to do with his work.

At the moment Helene was working in the maternity ward, where it was hard to look after all the women properly. Sanitary towels were constantly being changed, bedpans brought, compresses had to be changed every hour, cold compresses to ward off childbed fever and curd compresses at any hint of mastitis. There were genital tears to be tended, navels to be powdered. Helene brought the women their babies from the nursery and put them to their breasts. Pink healthy babies sucked sweet milk from their mothers’ full breasts while their fathers were fighting on the front far away, in east and west, on land, at sea and in the air, waiting for Leningrad to be starved out. Helene preferred not to think, there were directions, procedures to be carried out, calls for her, she had to act, she had to hurry, she put the babies to their mothers’ breasts, she changed their nappies, weighed and inoculated them, and wrote one last letter to the old address she had for Leontine. She would not send any more; she had not received a single reply to any of her letters. The long-distance telephone exchange informed her that there was no number for that address any more and no lady doctor of that name was known. Helene went home only to sleep.