Julia Franck - Back to Back

Would you like my pullover? He did indeed have in his bag the pullover that he had put on to go to the hospital early that morning, before the warmth of the day had set in. He gave it to Marie and watched as she raised her slender arms in the air, and the blouse over her flat stomach slipped up a little way: he had now known, for several hours, what that body looked like naked.

Hadn’t she said she would always be with him?

Could he hold her tightly, was it presumptuous to want to touch your lover’s body? Be one with it? He wanted to unite with her, be one with her, one and the same body. But he guessed what her physical experience had been. Marie must be afraid of him. He didn’t want to hurt her, he didn’t want to make her dance, or hit her and threaten her. The thought of her husband offering her body to others maddened him.

Her head emerged from the neckline. It smells nice in your pullover, it smells safe, it smells of you, she said, smiling.

Thomas picked up his trousers, which were rather damp on one side; his underpants were still inside them, and he put on both at once. He put the folded sheets of paper with his poems on them in the right-hand pocket of his trousers, and inside the left pocket he felt the hard little beaker with the amount of morphine that was not enough yet. If only we were a couple, Thomas began, without knowing where the rest of the sentence might lead him.

We are a couple, Marie interrupted him. There’s no one in the world I feel good with and want to be with except you.

I mean, Thomas said, hesitantly, for he was glad to hear what she said, but he didn’t mean the secret meetings, he didn’t mean the almost incorporeal ardour that inflamed all desire and yet was meant to suppress it at the same time, a real couple, he meant, and went on thinking out loud, in real life, because he wanted to explain it to her and yet he couldn’t. It doesn’t have to be marriage. But I mean, if we could live together as man and wife, I’d study hard, I’d go to work, never mind at what, for the little girl, for you and me. Even as he said it he felt ashamed; the word foolish occurred to him, he felt how silly such remarks were, how impossible his hope was.

Marie shook her head. Her smile was weary and perhaps a little sympathetic. You know it will never be like that.

Thomas did know.

He won’t let me have the little one. He’s always carried out his threats.

Thomas knew what she was going to say to him now; he wanted to put his hands over his ears, but he mustn’t and couldn’t. He was telling himself he must make an effort to understand as he heard Marie finishing what she was saying: If he catches me having a relationship he’ll get a divorce, and I’ll never see my little girl again.

By what right?

Never again.

By what right?

Marie bent down, picked up the little girl’s bottle, took the rubber teat off and washed it. She filled the bottle with water, poured the water out, filled it again. The last rays of the red sun lit up her chestnut hair. Her long, narrow back was lying in the shadows. When she stood up and turned to Thomas, he could hardy see her eyes against the shining wreath of her hair.

I can’t live without my child. I can’t live with my husband, and I can’t live without you. She put the bottle in her wicker basket with the dark green tin from which they had been eating nuts and bread rolls in the course of the afternoon.

There’s no duty about it. No duty to love or to live. Thomas put his hand out to her, as she had done to him so often in the last few weeks. He knew that he couldn’t change her life for her. Only put out his hand and go beside her.

They stood close together, his nose in the shadow of her damp hair. The air smelled of the lake and twilight. His arms trembled when he couldn’t put them round her. She pressed close to him, so that he felt her breasts. Closely entwined, they stood there in silence, and he was glad that she returned his embrace, in spite of the body that could not give the lie to his desire.

I can’t do anything about love, she said.

Nor can almost everyone, he replied, no one can do that, and his dry lips moved over her hairline, her delicate brows, her lips. He put his hand in his trouser pocket and brought out the little beaker.

Take good care of it, she said. I’ll give you everything I can take in the immediate future.

I’ll look after our poison. Thomas put the beaker back out of sight in his pocket. We did not make our own beginning / But we can make ourselves an end, / Longing says, forget the voices. / Every passing day is our friend.

We’ll go on collecting until we have enough for both of us; her warm breath in his ear was intoxicating. He wanted to kiss her, but the child was there and could wake up and see them at any moment. Thomas nodded, and as he nodded he felt her lips against his cheek, against his ear.

It will take a few weeks, they don’t keep large stocks in the cupboard and Matron checks everything. It has to be done when we get an opportunity like today.

Marie’s little daughter moved under the towel. She sat up, rubbing her eyes. Thomas let go of Marie, although the little girl wasn’t looking at them but poking her finger into her ear. Look there, she said, what’s that?

Marie crouched down beside the little girl. A glow-worm, darling. She put the child’s blue dress on her again and noticed the dampness of her back. Let’s go, it’s getting cool.

The little girl couldn’t walk very well or very far yet, and she wearily stretched out her arms and clung to Marie’s skirt. She bit Marie’s leg to make her stand still and pick her up. Marie’s back hurt — not from carrying the child, from work, she had told Thomas once long ago. She showed her daughter the glow-worms all over the ground, glowing green, like the fireworks known as Bengal lights. It was like star-gazing; if you looked for long enough you saw more and more stars in the sky. They had to keep stopping, and made slow progress. Thomas picked up a small twig with a glow-worm on it from the ground. Its light was dimmer when he held it, as if the movement had alarmed it, and its stumpy little wings reminded Thomas of how he and Michael had once examined a dead glow-worm through a magnifying glass. Thomas showed the little girl the glow-worm. It was black and ordinary-looking as soon as its light went out. It’s a female, he said, she crouches on the ground, glowing, and waiting for a male to come along. She can’t fly.

Not fly? The little girl took a step toward Thomas to take a closer look at the insect.

Otherwise they’d never meet. The female glows and waits on the ground, the male can fly and finds her. Thomas put the twig with the little glow-worm back on the ground. Come along, you can ride on my shoulders. He picked the child up, and was surprised to find how little she weighed.

Marie went ahead over the marshy ground between the tree, hardly able to see the path in the gathering darkness. When the woodland floor became firmer and drier, they reached the Fliess. There the path was wide enough for them to walk side by side.

Marie turned to Thomas. And when they find each other?

Then the male drops to the ground in mid-flight, they mate, and a few days after the female lays her eggs they both die.

Think of that, other creatures die for no reason.

They were walking through the tall plants on the meadow now, with grasses and St John’s wort tickling their calves. Looking through the trees, Thomas saw the tram with its lights on waiting for late passengers at the terminus.

You can both come home to us, said Thomas, holding onto the child’s soft calves; she seemed to be asleep on his shoulders, he felt her chin weighing down strongly and heavily on his head. My mother is in Leuna, working, my sister won’t mind, even if she’s there. She’s had an apartment allotted to her, she’s hoping to get the key any day now.