Julia Franck - Back to Back

Swimming was out of the question; her arms failed her. She lay in the shallow water where it was not easy to drown. She could still feel the sand on her stomach, the air tickled her skin above the water. Her small breasts rubbed over the bottom of the lake. Sometimes people thought she was a grown woman already — but she would always be a girl. She let her arms drift, took her feet off the bottom, opened her eyes in the water. The finely rippled sand reminded her that the world didn’t need her.

A limp body could lie comfortably in warm water as long as there was an above and a below — but Ella lost her sense of direction, felt dizzy, and crawled up on land on her stomach, over the pale sand to the shallow hollow where she had spent the last hours of the night.

She lay down in the hollow on her back. She could feel the ground beneath her, the sand on her bare back, her behind, her legs, her heels, and she linked her arms behind her head and looked up at a huge, fleecy, white tower of cloud, pink at the edges. An airy structure that, sublime in shape and sharply outlined, was making its way swiftly eastward over the Müggel Schnüggel. A bird of some kind flew up. If Thomas had been lying there beside her, he would have guessed, even without seeing it, what bird it was. She had already closed her eyes several times that morning, wanting to go to sleep.

She rolled over on her side, on her stomach, rolled on, working up impetus, rolled down the slope again until she was close to the water, a girl coated in sand like fish or meat coated in breadcrumbs. When she closed her eyes there was a bolt over a door, the images were strong, they reached for her, and she felt queasy. She had to open her eyes. It was Monday; in this country of workers no one but Ella had time to lie by the lake, so she was on her own. Today the wardrobe mistress would wait in vain for Ella to arrive at the workshop. September the third, whispered Ella. Did numbers have their own magic, as Thomas had once claimed? How could she simply say the date, how could she think; her pulse hammered, and there was a rushing sound of wind and blood in her ears. Whoo hoo, a date of no importance, only today’s date, a date that certainly wouldn’t signify anything else. Nothing else. Ella hated premonitions, especially her own. She was afraid of herself, wanted to reassure herself, and would need strength; she ought to get up, wanted to get up and walk through the wood to the tram stop, she must get up. Ella, get up, she told herself. You lazy beast, she told herself. Lazy was how Käthe put it, the beast was her own idea, but it didn’t fit. She wasn’t lazy, she wanted to do things, but she couldn’t, couldn’t manage to fold her legs up, stand on her feet. Ella rolled over in the water, it lapped around her ears, splashed on her skin, gurgled in her mouth. She crawled up the slope on all fours to the hollow where she had left her clothes. First get dry, then get dressed. She must go to Rahnsdorf, back to Thomas. Kneeling over the hollow, she watched the water dripping out of her hair, digging tiny pits in the sand.

The best way to get dry was to lie on your back in the warm sand. The trunks and branches of the pines of the Brandenburg Mark shimmered with a reddish tinge above her, there was a smell of resin and late summer and barely stagnant water. Once again she rolled over on her stomach, her face in the sand, sand in her nose, on her lips, on her tongue. It wasn’t easy to suffocate, she took shallow breaths and put her arms together above her head in the sand, as she and Thomas used to do when they were children, a bird that couldn’t drown and couldn’t stifle. She turned on her back again and brushed the sand off her breasts, where it was clinging like a second skin.

She heard the squealing of a tram in the distance. She didn’t have to catch a tram, she could walk instead, back to Käthe’s house. Ella imagined herself waiting and the tram ahead, coming towards her. She straightened one leg, but the knee gave way; it took her an effort to stand up and walk back to Rahnsdorf, where she had come from only a few hours ago. Before spending a wakeful night in the hollow. She had missed the last tram in Rahnsdorf yesterday evening, and she hadn’t felt like walking through the wood to the suburban train station and back to her new, empty apartment where there was a smell of fresh paint. She had preferred to walk through the wood to the lake. Not over the marshy ground, not to the landing stage, she had gone to the pine trees, where the sand would still be warm from the day before.

The clouds were moving in the direction of Rahnsdorf, and she must set off that way herself, but she couldn’t. She didn’t mind that her skin was encrusted with sand. She went on all fours, there was a trunk, the trunk of a blue elephant, a trunk that looked like her arm, and a waving hand that tugged at a trouser leg. Don’t be afraid of it, she heard Thomas say, first seriously and then amused. She heard him laughing, and giggled too, her hand waved to the trouser leg, picked it up and waved it in the air.

Ella pulled on her corduroy trousers, put on her blouse, the sand clung to her long, thick hair. As she went up the slope and over the pine needles on the ground to the tram stop, she felt her hair making her blouse damp, her back was cold, she had gooseflesh. Had she left her shoes on the bank or in Rahnsdorf yesterday evening? She didn’t look round, she didn’t go back, even without a watch she knew it was time to go to Rahnsdorf, she must go there, she walked barefoot along the paved road, she could already hear the scorching squeal of the tram in the distance.

But the tram went past as if no one was waiting for it. Perhaps the driver thought he saw a blue elephant there at the tram stop.

She had been in Käthe’s house only yesterday evening. She had gone to Rahnsdorf, wanting to see Thomas. She laughed briefly. You bastard, she had hissed softly, you lousy bastard. Why hadn’t anyone come? Hadn’t she issued invitations to her house-warming party, hadn’t she given him a note two weeks earlier: Coming to my house-warming? Please do! And bring Marie with you. He hadn’t answered. He had put the note in his trouser pocket, but had he ever read it?

Ella balanced her way along the rail. If she could make it to a hundred planks along the tramline, everything would be all right. What, everything?

One, two, three, four, no Siegfried and no Johnny, no one had turned up at Ella’s new apartment in Köpenick on Saturday, no Michael and no Violetta. Eight, nine, perhaps she had only imagined the invitations and never asked anyone out loud, ten? Ella wobbled, regained her balance and went on. Eleven, twelve, around midnight, tired of waiting, she had gone to sleep. Only next day, on Sunday, had she gone to Rahnsdorf to see Thomas. Why didn’t you come? She knew he had the note, he couldn’t talk his way out of that, she had invited him, she’d even put it in writing. Fifteen, sixteen, or had she counted plank number fifteen twice? Eighteen, nineteen. Why hadn’t he come to celebrate and dance with her? Twenty, twenty-one, he usually liked to be with her. Twenty-three. He had tried over the last two months, tried hard with her when she couldn’t remember a figure or a name, let alone a date. Twenty-five. A fire salamander was lying on the rails in front of her, basking in the sun, Ella wobbled again, she didn’t want to alarm the salamander, she got down into the grass and crouched beside the rail, stretched her hand out and waited. The salamander would come. Bubbles in her head, and blue elephants, they didn’t need any formulas or correct spelling.

When she lost her temper with Thomas while she was studying, because she thought he spoke too fast, when she had cried because she thought she would never get any algebra into her head, where blue elephants still lurked round every corner, stealing as much space as they could, and even when she had been angry, calling him an ape, pulling his hair and throwing her compasses at him because she didn’t understand something — he had just sat there, at the most ducking out of the way. If she had run off he would be waiting for her, handing her her pencil when she came back hours later. The salamander moved its head, it turned, went several steps towards Ella, stopped and waited with its head in the sun. Something had warned it, maybe it could sense Ella’s uneasiness, she had no time to wait here for a salamander while the door of the room in Rahnsdorf had been closed all yesterday evening, and perhaps it still was.