Julia Franck - Back to Back

There were footsteps in the corridor. Ella closed the folder and pushed it under the bed as quietly as she could. The footsteps stopped outside the unlocked door, no other sound met Ella’s ears. Käthe might ask what she was doing there if she saw Ella kneeling beside Thomas’s bed. As quietly as possible, Ella raised her right leg. Something creaked in the corridor. She heard a match striking. No breathing, no rattling of a cigarette case or rustling of a packet. The smoke of a cigarette came through the narrow gap where the door stood ajar. Even before Ella was on her feet, the door was pushed open.

The lodger stood there in his hat and coat, holding a briefcase.

Who said you could use this room? His glance fell on the black walls, the shattered glass of the shot-up picture which made Ulbricht unrecognisable, the desk, his typewriter.

Ella stood up, clutching her cardigan together at the neck.

They said last year you wouldn’t be back.

Suspected of undermining our efforts — the lodger puffed out smoke — that’s what we call it when someone talks too much.

Could be. Anyway, there was no one here for a long time, so my brother thought he could use the room.

Your brother — thought?

Käthe said so. No one comes here any more, so we might as well use it. She wants to rent it out to students as soon as I’ve found my own place. Then Thomas can have my room.

What kind of place are you hoping to find, a room on your own?

An apartment.

I see, a whole apartment for the high-class daughter of the intelligentsia.

The lodger was looking at the door. So you two simply changed the lock, did you? Took it off? The lodger took a step towards Ella.

Intelligentsia? Ella knew that on a Sunday, in full daylight, someone could come into the house at any time to use the toilet.

Barefoot, eh? The lodger ventured a grin. Ella looked down at herself. Only now did she realise that she had left her sandals on the bank of the river. Her toenails had black rims, and there was sand between her toes. The lodger put his briefcase down on the desk, opened it, and took out a loose-leaf file. He opened the file, studied a note with two official stamps at the top, and said, as a length of ash fell off his cigarette to the floor: But you know, don’t you, that these items of furnishing are state property? This desk, the typewriter, the bed, the lamp, a picture — fleetingly, the lodger raised his head and glanced at the frame with the picture that had been used as a target — and a rug. Three metres by three metres. If I may ask, what have you done with the bouclé rug? Ella looked at the rug where paint had been spilt last summer. The place had dried up, no one had gone to the trouble of washing the rug. What rug? She could hear footsteps and voices in the corridor.

We brought a pale green rug in.

I don’t know anything about that.

Doors opened and closed in the corridor. Well, this is a surprise, Heinz, what are you doing here? Käthe came into the room, closely followed by the potter; perhaps she had been going to show him the bathroom. The potter stayed standing in the doorway.

Good day. What am I doing here? Checking the inventory. As you know, comrade, these things were to have been taken away tomorrow in a van.

A van? I don’t know anything about that. Käthe put her hands on her hips.

Were to have been. But we’re staying.

You’re staying?

Can we talk privately?

Käthe turned to the potter, and then her eyes fell on Ella. Of course, yes.

We shall go on paying the rent. A friend of mine will be arriving at the end of May. Hartmut.

Hartmut?

Can we speak alone, please? The lodger pointed to the desk. And incidentally, there are personal possessions in this desk. I’ll take those away today.

Ella squinted at the desk. Had Thomas never opened the desk drawer? Its lock seemed to be intact.

This is Heinz, my lodger. We have to discuss something in private, Käthe told the potter, who seemed to be rooted to the spot in the doorway. And you get out of here, said Käthe firmly, turning to Ella. How about this? Käthe took hold of Ella’s cardigan. What a nerve! First my blouse, then my cardigan. She gave Ella a ringing slap in the face. Get out, and fast. How long since she had last had her face slapped? Was there an age when you were too old for it? Ella had never minded a slap in the face as little as she did today. Ella nodded, and she pushed past the potter.

Have you thought about the proposition? His voice squawked slightly.

Not yet. Without turning to him, Ella unbuttoned the cardigan and hung it up on the hook. Her long hair tickled her back pleasantly. She thought only fleetingly of the discussion of parabolas and curves that she ought to have been studying. Modelling for a Weissensee drawing circle, thought Ella. The words Weissensee drawing circle made her think of circular French knitting with a spool and four nails. Is anyone hungry? The hell with this passion for working, this reverence for labour, all that wretched striving for assiduous performance. You could live without ambition. She wanted to paint, she wanted to draw with Indian ink, maybe a watercolour of a fading magnolia. Paper and paints were available in Käthe’s studio. After that slap in the face she could leave the potter and the lodger alone with Käthe, her mind at rest. With her trouser legs rolled up to the knee, Ella went barefoot and topless along the corridor as if that were the most natural thing in the world, and opened the door to the smoking room. Was her cheek glowing from Käthe’s hand, from the wine, from her wish to paint? Fongfong. There was a green bottle on the long table in the smoking room, still one-third full of the dark wine. Ella broke the cork, which was crumbling and soft, and the sourish smell of wine rose to her nostrils. She pushed the remains of the cork down into the bottle with her finger and drank, the wine gurgling down her throat, without putting the bottle down, without breathing or tasting it, until the bottle was empty. Ella could already hear the voices of the caster and his journeyman from the stairs. Käthe had probably left them to wait in the studio while she showed the potter the whereabouts of the bathroom up in the house.

The journeyman fell silent when he saw Ella, half naked, coming down the stairs. Ella ignored him, went over to the chest of portfolios, and pulled out the top drawer. Behind her back, the caster was now silent too. At her leisure, Ella tested the quality of the paper. Most of the sheets seemed to her too large and too thin. Paper for drawing was not suitable for Indian ink. She closed the drawer and opened the one under it. Here, Käthe kept pencils, charcoal, chalks, pens for Indian ink and erasers all in wild confusion; separated from them by a wooden partition in the middle of the drawer were brushes of various sizes, rough bristle brushes, silky mink and badger brushes, and also wooden sticks, flat ones and round ones, with dried paint on them. To the right of the drawer, again separated from the rest of the contents by an old water-level, lay the tubes, little bowls and bottles of gouache, tempera and oil paint, coloured ink, a small, round container of black Indian ink, and several tubes and small screw-top bottles of watercolours. It all smelled of turpentine. Her hands wriggled like eels among the tubes, pushed some aside, took others out of the depths of the cupboard. She found a half-empty little bowl of white Indian ink, a tube of pale yellowish-green watercolour and a blue one, now all she needed was purple. The silence behind her excited her. There was not a word from the caster and his journeyman. Ella thought of the caster’s deep, full voice, and the powerful shoulders with which he had lifted the bronzes out of his car and carried them into the studio as if they were light wooden carvings. The wine was singing behind Ella’s forehead, it sang in a ruby-red, a purple voice, it rushed along like a stream to which she would entrust herself and all the paints. Panther Rei, Thomas had once said to her, or something like that, and Ella had been glad to understand one of his cryptic magical words for once, because wasn’t the rey the king, the king of the panthers? Thomas had laughed, not mocking her, but he had told her gently: Panta, panta rhei. Ella had to pull the drawer farther out to look in the depths of the chest for purple paint. She placed herself sideways on to it, her long hair fell forward over her shoulders, she ran her hands through the paints and swept and pushed them together with her forearm. Cobalt, aquamarine, indigo. Most of the tubes were rolled far up, the tops were missing from a few of them. Fiery red clung to the fingers of her right hand, and something dark as well, probably charcoal. Ella was now almost lying with her torso over the drawer so that she could reach right inside the cupboard with her outstretched arm. Ouch — she took her hand out and put her thumb into her mouth. Something had cut her, probably the sharp folded edge of a tube. Ella tasted oil paint, there was nothing for it, if she had cut her thumb saliva was the best treatment.