Judith Hermann - Alice

The house where Richard lived was on the right-hand side of the street. The right-hand side was in the shade. Alice looked up at Richard’s closed windows and thought: In a room in that apartment in this house on this street a man I know is dying. Everyone else is doing something else. Thinking this was a little like reciting a poem, someone else’s words, not anything you could comprehend. She stopped under the arch of the main entrance and listened to a faraway child’s recorder: Cuckoo, cuckoo, half a scale, two trills, and it was finished. Alice pressed the bell. Leaning against the door, she pressed the copper bell button with her index finger. The buzzer buzzed, and the door opened.

The peonies in the milk bottle were wilted but still standing on the windowsill. A white-edged blue tablecloth covered the table, on it a bottle of water, an ashtray, an open address book with the telephone on top, a stationery pad, pens, matches, a pair of reading glasses. Margaret fetched two glasses from the kitchen, emptied the ashtray. She sat down where Richard had sat two weeks ago, on the chair in front of the books, in the shelter of the books, their spines, their consolingly familiar titles. Who would read these thousand books once Richard no longer needed them? These were the very questions Alice was ashamed of, but which she kept thinking anyway. Margaret poured Alice a glass of water, then one for herself. She opened a pack of cigarettes. Alice could still remember just what that was like, each detail — tugging gently on the little strip of cellophane, then the rustling foil, prying out the first cigarette. Virginia and orient tobaccos — one world. Margaret lit a cigarette, blew out the match, getting rid of the sulphur smell with a wave of her hand. Her face was tanned by the June sun. There was something radiant, strong, very much alive about her. She smoked cheerfully. It’s nice that you came, Alice, she said. And suddenly Alice also thought that it was nice to be allowed to sit here again so unexpectedly, in this room, whose permanence would end at the exact moment Richard stopped breathing, but no one knew just when that would happen, and as long as he was still breathing, it was all here: the table, the books, the flowers, the reading glasses, the glasses of water, his name on the door, and his brown jacket hanging over the back of the desk chair.

Margaret, Alice said.

Margaret nodded, said, Well, as far as possible we’ve worked it all out. We’ve arranged everything. The musicians, the cemetery chapel, the gravesite. We’ve set a date for the funeral. In three weeks.

And what if Richard hasn’t died by then, Alice asked.

Oh, by then he’ll have managed that, Margaret said.

They’d discussed the subject two weeks ago; Margaret and Richard had talked about it in front of Alice. Alice had listened. At first she thought it was indecent, unseemly, to be talking with Richard about his own funeral, but instead it turned out to be the natural thing to do. Not unseemly. Richard had said he wanted his friends to carry his coffin, not the gravediggers. No sermon by a minister, no quotations. If the weather’s good, that would please him. Margaret had taken notes on the stationery pad: Whom to call, who should be there, no one should stay away. The food: sandwiches with plum jam, meatballs, and beer.

She had said, That’s what we’ll do. We’ll do it just like that, Richard; it’ll be a very nice funeral, and Richard had said, Yes it will be, and he had looked at Margaret, a look that Alice tried to describe to Raymond later, but had to give up on because it was impossible to describe.

That’s how it is, Margaret said. I haven’t slept for a whole week. I’ve distanced myself; I’m standing above it all. When it’s over I’ll collapse. I realise that. Hardly anyone has come to see us since your visit two weeks ago. Things went downhill fast after that. Hard to believe how fast they can go downhill. You can see it happening. You can actually see it.

She stopped talking and listened. Now he’s asleep, she said. He’s not in pain. What time is it? Let’s see — almost five. That means the nurse will be here soon, in half an hour; he’s got a suitcase full of morphine that he carries around with him through half the city. Will you stay a while longer?

Yes, Alice said. I’ll stay. She looked across the hall to the other room that faced the courtyard. Richard’s bed was next to the wall on the right. The window was open, the curtains drawn. Richard was lying there with his head near the door, his closed eyes turned towards the window. Alice could see his head, the grey hair.

Margaret said, The curtains are from when I was a girl.

Muslin, Alice said.

Yes, muslin. Margaret nodded. If I had known as a girl — fifty years ago — that one day I’d be hanging them in Richard’s death chamber. Or …

The white curtains swayed gently in the breeze. Almost imperceptibly, back and forth. Causing a slight change in the light. Hints of embroidery, trimmings. Tiny flowers circled by wreaths, various shades of white.

The visiting nurse came at six. He brought papaya, mango, and pineapple in a little plastic container, all cut into small pieces. And more water. The room was warm, summery. For a while, they sat there together. Eating the papaya, mango, pineapple. You’ve got to eat, Margaret, the nurse said, preparing the morphine and charging the syringe. Then he went into the bedroom. Alice picked up a piece of papaya, smooth and orange coloured. She heard the nurse speaking to Richard, calmly and matter-of-factly, not as if he were talking to a child. She glanced over briefly; he was bending over the bed, had put his hands on Richard’s head. It looked as though he were going to kiss him. Then he came back and, sitting at the table, tied the laces of his trainers. He was still fairly young. Shaved head, soft features, several earrings. To Margaret he said, So, I’ll have my cellphone with me; we’ll be on the roof today, grilling and stuff, I’ll probably have a beer. Or two. Nothing’s going to happen today. Maybe tomorrow. I think, tomorrow it will all be over. But call me if you need me.

He said, He notices when you’re sitting next to him, when you touch him. He notices everything. Maybe he was saying this to Alice. They said goodbye, formally, it didn’t matter that they didn’t know each other. Then he left.

At some point Alice left too. Margaret walked her to the door; they held each other in a brief, tight hug. I’ll let you know, Margaret said. When it happens. When it’s over, I mean. I’ll call you.

Alice went back along Rheinsberger Strasse, walking down the middle of the street, on the light-coloured, the dark-coloured asphalt. Dusk was falling, and lights were going on in the houses, people were watering their plants on the balconies, and the water dripped down on the shady pavements. The hum of evening. The dog days of summer. It hadn’t rained in a long time and dried linden blossoms rustled in the gutters. Very gradually the heat was letting up a bit. Cars at the traffic lights on the main street, the elevated train going in the opposite direction, and the tram with its green windowpanes and the blue sparks flying in the grid under the bridge. Alice passed the newsagent’s, its window pasted over with ads, the ugly newspaper racks, and the neon sign for Toto-Lotto now on, flickering. A loose connection. The fat man was standing in front of the door. He had come outside, just for a change. Hands in his trouser pockets, the frayed sweater, a friendly, tired face. He nodded at Alice, and Alice nodding back, thought, He knows where I’ve been. No, he can’t know. The water’s been drunk; the cigarettes will all have been smoked by tomorrow morning.

She stopped at the traffic lights and phoned Raymond. He answered after the seventh ring, and his voice sounded far away and strange.