Julia Franck - Back to Back

Her hands scratched frantically, her arms, she scratched her arms, her legs, she scratched her crotch, under her stockings, her throat, she scratched her face hard.

What are you doing? Don’t scratch like that, you’ll bleed. Thomas stood up and tried to hold her hands tightly.

It’s that acrid smoke makes me feel sick. Admit it, you’re smoking henbane, some kind of poison! Put your silly pipe out, will you? Ella could scream shrilly, hysterically. She was beside herself. The burning wasn’t the guests out there, not Käthe or some kind of wall, the burning was her brother with his silly pipe and always talking about prison. Ella screamed.

Thomas put his pipe down, knelt in front of her and held both her hands. Look, you’re bleeding already!

Yes, because of you!

You’re going red all over, you’re coming out in spots. Her bare arms were covered with raised marks. Tears rose to Thomas’s eyes. Ella — he tried to hold her firmly — stop scratching, stop it. With all his might he tried to grasp her wrists in his hands.

You’re hurting me!

He let her go, wound his arms round her, wanting to put an end to her fury, but she knocked them away.

Ella? She heard anxiety in his voice. Well, let him be anxious. Ella, she heard gentle determination in it as well, just let him try it, he wanted to save her, however much he wanted to keep her safe he couldn’t.

He put his arms round her again, stroked her back, and this time she let him, let her arms dangle, put up with his concern, he must be able to feel her sobbing under his hands.

I’ve come of age. In tears, Ella sniffed. I’ve been able to go anywhere I like since February.

Thomas held her even more firmly. Of course she could go anywhere she liked. On her eighteenth birthday she had been in hospital. He had visited her there, she had liked that, and she had liked the blackbirds singing outside her window early in the morning. But then she had been sent home two months later. Cured. So they said.

I don’t want to stay here any more, I can’t stand it here any more. She nestled close to his throat, dried her tears on him, rubbed at her wet eyelashes, no one but Thomas could comfort her. Her skin was still burning, but she could bear it as long as Thomas held her in his arms. The lodger. .

Shh. Thomas laid a finger on her mouth. We’ll find you a room, an apartment, we’ll get you out of here.

The lodger. . he. . she sobbed.

That’s a promise. Thomas held Ella close; he thought he knew what she wanted to tell him. But he didn’t. Applications would have to be made, the housing management committee of the commune would have to be convinced.

. . I think I’m pregnant.

Abruptly, Thomas held Ella away from him. He had taken her by the shoulders, he stared at her. He looked defeated. Ella could see him searching for sensible ideas, something sensible to say. Whose is it? He swallowed, looked down as he suddenly realised how foolish this question was; he knew the answer and whispered it quietly, without looking Ella in the face.

His arms dropped, slack, powerless. All his love, his unconditional concern for Ella, his watchfulness, his careful silence in spite of the boundless fury he felt, none of it had been able to help her or prevent this.

Ella nodded, gritted her teeth and looked straight at Thomas. He had only to open his eyelids for her to see herself in his eyes; he opened them, his eyes were brimming over.

When? Thomas asked so quietly that she had to lip-read the word.

A few weeks ago, when you were camping with Roland and Michael. The weekend after your exams.

He lowered his eyes again wearily, a tear was running down his nose. Why didn’t you tell me?

What could I have told you? The lodger came back? He lay in wait for me and he fucked me?

A woman’s screech of laughter could be heard from the corridor, a man was talking non-stop to her, she laughed, something went off with a bang, presumably the cork from a bottle of sparkling wine.

Thomas leaned forward, reached under Ella’s chair and picked up the parrot feather. She must have dropped it. He held the feather in his hand and said nothing.

What is it?

Perhaps he didn’t know what to say. His silence made Ella despair.

Oh, say something, speak to me! Do you think I didn’t resist? Do you think I just let it happen? I threatened him, he threatened me. He can do us all harm, Käthe won’t get any more commissions, she’s already lost her lectureship. .

Thomas lay down on his bed and folded his arms behind his head. He stared at the ceiling, but only briefly; then he closed his eyes. He certainly wasn’t asleep. No one could be asleep now, with the party merrily in progress outside. Was he thinking?

Ella crossed her legs. She mustn’t cry.

It can be got rid of, she said quietly. But Thomas did not reply; his face showed no emotion.

Maybe it will just go away of its own accord.

Thomas said nothing.

Are you asleep?

No. He sat up and slowly picked up single sheets of paper with his poems on them, typed on the only typewriter in the house, which belonged to the lodger.

What are you reading?

Once again, Thomas did not answer. When it took him so long to find his answers it made her furious. Recently he had often resorted to going away.

Leave me alone. I can’t talk any more, he said without looking at her.

Ella waited for a while. Maybe he would read one of them aloud to her, maybe he would close the blue folder of poems and come over to her, be with her. But then she saw the shame in his face. Helplessness tormenting him. He could neither protect nor save his sister, he couldn’t do anything. She could hardly bear to see him, she was ashamed of herself; she shouldn’t have told him about the pregnancy.

She wouldn’t be able to bear it here much longer. Someone had put a record on outside. Dance music.

Am I in the way? Shall I go out? Ella was not expecting an answer. She positioned herself in front of the mirror and, with a brush, painted huge red marks on her cheeks, outlined her mouth and eyes with the same brush. Let him read poems if he liked, write new ones, regret the damn freedom he talked about, lie miserably on his bed — she was going to dance.

After the final end

(Autumn 1961)

The stones iron

The shadows have long lashes,

They beat in the wind. .

Cries cooing, a sound like bone

On the slopes

Decomposition grins back

In the dark

Statistics are silenced

For ever.

The moon has a yard

With little crosses

The night weeps

Horror limps on crutches

To another star –

which is glad to see it!

God has

Drunk himself to death.

He stinks of schnapps.

Tears clink like glass

A pearl necklace –

Endless!

Death sleeps

For ever –

He has been overworking!

He can’t rub his hands

Any more.

He’s too tired!

The light has dried up

Ice does not drench –

If God were not drunk

I would thank him!

The lodger’s room was taboo. Käthe sent Ella and Thomas into it in turn just to kneel and clean the floor. They drew back the curtains, aired the room and scrubbed the floor. All through the hot, stifling month of August he hadn’t been there, dead flies lay on his windowsill, and in sultry September he still didn’t come. It could hardly be a guilty conscience that kept him away, for it hadn’t been the first time he had raped Ella, and apart from Thomas no one knew she was carrying a child. Presumably his superiors at the Ministry of State Security had other plans for such a glorious and versatile lodger as he was. The anti-fascist struggle certainly called for conspiratorial meetings along the border which was making such waves. Perhaps the conspiratorial meeting place, the room under Käthe’s roof for entertaining officers and spies working undercover, seemed rather risky to the Ministry of State Security after 13 August. Ardent and zealous as the communist attitude of someone like Käthe might be, she went on welcoming friends and relations from abroad, whose true intentions and convictions could not be guaranteed as harmless. Hadn’t Thomas heard Käthe telling her American brother Paul at her summer party that her lodger was a State Security officer whose spying activities, as she saw it, were above all harmless, but also a lucrative source of income and necessary if she was to practise her profession? It was possible that this conversation had not only lingered in Thomas’s mind but had made its way into higher circles. How secret and secure was the Rahnsdorf room now? The question of whether she talked to her brother about her lucrative sideline entirely inadvertently, or on purpose, knowing that bystanders would hear this confidential remark and she would be rid of her lodger, gave him no peace. After scrubbing the floor, Thomas sat in the lodger’s armchair and would have liked to take a nap. Outside the window, the maple rustled in blood-red fire, its glow anticipating winter, and the wind bowed its branches. There had still been a lime tree beside it last year, with heart-shaped brimstone-yellow leaves and a black trunk. But it had been felled after Käthe managed to acquire a Wartburg. For the Wartburg — its acquisition being entirely due to that lucrative sideline of renting out a room, and maybe the lodger himself had something to do with it — Käthe needed a broader entrance to the yard, and had simply picked up a saw. She had been furious when Thomas refused to hold the other handle. In the end her hired model from Friedrichshagen had helped her.