Julia Franck - Back to Back

Thomas had sat with her for weeks on end. Her clever little brother, who had simply overtaken and passed her at school, who had sat his final exams the year before. The stars, botany, poetry? Rubbish, good only for the back of beyond. Käthe was pleased, proud of her golden boy’s many interests. Gifted, said Ella to herself, gifted, that was how it sounded when Käthe said it. Ella was certainly not jealous, as Käthe liked to claim. But gifts didn’t do those in need any good, those who were to suffer were gifted. However, the German Democratic Republic had other plans for the sons of what it supposed was its intelligentsia. Ella got up, the salamander startled by her movement, scuttled away. It wasn’t much farther to Rahnsdorf, she could be there in ten minutes’ time if she wanted.

Why hadn’t Thomas come to Ella’s house-warming party? How could he fail to celebrate the most important day of her nineteen years of life with her? Her escape from that dark house, her first apartment of her own, the life of freedom that was just beginning.

Perhaps he hadn’t wanted to leave the twins on their own. Käthe had been in Leuna for weeks, and wouldn’t be back until Monday. Monday was today. It would take her several hours to get here from Leuna, she wouldn’t arrive until late in the morning or around midday. Ella walked along between the tramlines where the grass grew high. She bent down and picked a stem of shepherd’s purse. You could chew the seeds if you felt restless. The heart-shaped little pod lay on the tongue like a tiny sweet. She pushed it between her front teeth and bit it.

When Ella had arrived at Käthe’s house yesterday afternoon, she found his door closed. She heard his voice on the other side of it, and Marie’s voice too. Music was playing softly on the radio. At first Ella didn’t want to disturb them; she thought she would wait for them to leave the room and then tell them off. Why didn’t you come to my party? But when they still hadn’t come out of the room an hour later, she had knocked. There had been no reply from Thomas. The twins ran along the corridor, one chasing the other, they pulled out tufts of each other’s hair and waved these trophies in the air, shouting. Ella had gone into the garden, enjoying Käthe’s absence. Was she a guest in the house now? Did having her own apartment make her a guest here, a secret, uninvited guest? Ella had lain down in the meadow beside the fuchsias to enjoy the last of the sun. Without Käthe there were no orders to do housework, no weeding, no cooking meals. When Ella came into the house later, the twins had bitten each other, and cheerfully showed Ella the bite marks. The door of Thomas’s room was still closed. Ella had listened. Quiet murmuring, she hadn’t been able to make out a word. Or perhaps she had only imagined the murmuring? She had knocked, but no one had answered. She had knocked a second time. All was quiet on the other side of the door. Later she had gone out at twilight to throw little stones up at Thomas’s window. Are you ever going to open that door?

If today was September the third, then yesterday had been the second. Or was she wrong, hadn’t she spent a sleepless night beside the Müggelsee, had she been there not just for a few hours overnight but for a whole day and a night? How long was Thomas going to hide away in his room with his girlfriend Marie?

Ella could see the ruins of the mill behind the trees already; in less than five minutes she would be in Rahnsdorf. Yellow St John’s wort was fading everywhere, the tall grass had scorched during the summer, and the rusty red spikes of sorrel were drying to brown.

The twins had moaned and grumbled; wasn’t Ella going to have something to eat with them? But Ella had not been hungry, and was restless, she kept going up and down the corridor, past Thomas’s locked door, she listened, she went into the bathroom and back to the smoking room, always past that door. When she came into the smoking room the twins were sitting on the sofa, swinging their legs and whining. Ella closed her ears to them and went back to the corridor, the dark corridor, past Thomas’s room, past Käthe’s bedroom, she looked into her own room, the room she had occupied until a few days ago. Her former room, now taken over by the twins. They had tidied up and made their beds. Perhaps they had learned to do that in the children’s home or from their foster-family. Back in the corridor Ella had to pass Thomas’s door again. The silence astonished her. She stopped. Had someone turned off the radio? She knocked. Still no answer. Bastard, thought Ella, just you wait, when you come out I’ll give you a piece of my mind. Where were you, why didn’t you come to my party? Ella could hear her own breathing against the door. She bent down and tried to look through the keyhole. But now that Thomas had changed the lock you couldn’t see through it any more. He might possibly have stopped it up, sticking something over it on the inside. She knocked a second time. Thomas? Ella heard herself asking, and this time she pressed the door handle down. Someone must have locked it. Ella held the handle down and leaned against the door. The new catch didn’t have a key, but hadn’t he fitted a bolt on the inside only a few weeks ago? So the door could be locked only from inside the room. Ella had gone back into the smoking room. The twins had come out of the kitchen with their hands full of raisins, which they placed on the table, dividing them, raisin by raisin, into two equal piles. Couldn’t they cook something themselves? She knew very little about the twins.

Ella didn’t want to pick a perilous way along the tramlines now, she walked between the rails, getting slower and slower, as if she could overcome her inner uneasiness by moving lethargically. At the tram stop she changed direction, hesitantly put one foot before the other, trudged through the tall grass to the street, where there was not a car in sight, although it was Monday morning. When she crossed the cobblestones and saw Käthe’s house, she looked up at the windows first. The left-hand window of Thomas’s room was not quite closed; the curtains were still drawn, hardly moving in the draught.

During the past week, Thomas had helped Ella to paint her apartment. It had been a hot August day, and they had opened all the windows. And Thomas had turned to her, looked up at her as she stood on the ladder, and asked her why she was so happy. Because I’m free now, she had told him, laughing. You’re welcome to sleep here with Marie when I go to the Baltic in autumn, you and she can stay here for a week or two then. From his face, she had realised that he didn’t understand her delight, and her suggestion seemed anything but tempting to him. He had said: You call that being free? Ella wasn’t interested in the Wall, it was a few hundred metres away, not even in sight from here. She was interested only in what was close, very close.

Taking two steps at a time, she pressed down the handle of the front door to the house. The door opened easily, as it always did, as easily as if there were a spirit standing inside to open it just as you pressed the handle down on the outside.

The chill in the corridor reminded her of winter nights. Ella looked through the open doorway of her own old room. The beds there were still made, but there was no sign of the twins. The bathroom door was open, no one was in there, but the tap was dripping. In passing, Ella opened the front of the grandfather clock and gave the pendulum a little push to set it moving. She set the hands of the clock with one finger. How late might it be? Eight, nine, or much earlier than she thought? After a few minutes she decided on eight in the morning, which seemed right for a Monday.

Passing the door of Thomas’s room, Ella opened the smoking room door. One of the twins was sleeping with her mouth open on the sofa, the other was lying on the carpet in front of the sofa, curled up like a small animal. Hadn’t anyone told them to go to bed? Ella went back into the corridor. She stopped outside Thomas’s door. Apart from the ticking pendulum of the grandfather clock, a sound that now filled the corridor, Ella could hear nothing. She didn’t ask him, she cautiously tried the handle, but the door was as firmly locked as it had been yesterday evening.