Julia Franck - Back to Back

The twins’ small feet trip past. Ella stays lying under the coat stand, she can easily be seen from here, the feet come and go, but she also has a clear view of Thomas’s room, where with the help of the other policeman the doctor is placing Marie’s body in one of the coffins. The coffin stands on the right, beside the bouclé rug; on the left is the bed with Thomas on it. The coffin stays open while the doctor turns to the male body and examines it. Only occasionally does he try to manipulate Marie’s fingers, seeing whether and how they are getting stiffer, moves the arm to the edge of the coffin. One of the twins squeals. The doctor asks the policeman to take these children to his colleague and their mother.

Ella sees the feet passing her. The twins do not want to go to Käthe; they hardly know the woman described by the policeman as their mother. The second zinc coffin is carried out of the bathroom and past Ella. It is placed on the bouclé rug beside the bed, where Marie’s body was lying on the sheet earlier.

The doctor asks the policeman to help him. They lift Thomas and put him in the zinc coffin.

You mustn’t do that, says Ella, standing up. She goes over to the doctor and the policeman. They both look up at her, they want to stretch out the legs and place the arms on the dead body so that it will all fit into the coffin.

You mustn’t part them. Ella looks from Marie’s coffin to Thomas’s coffin. They want to be together for ever.

The doctor takes no notice of Ella, he adjusts Thomas’s head. Here — Ella picks up the doctor’s stethoscope to get at Thomas’s trouser pocket. The doctor must have misunderstood; he takes the stethoscope out of her hand and tells her not to touch it.

It’s not about your stethoscope, says Ella, perfectly calm now, it’s about love, and she take Thomas’s poem out of his trouser pocket. She doesn’t have to reread it to know what it says. She holds the folded sheets out to the doctor: And who will sit / in judgement on us? / You who see us, / do not forget, / we love each other, she says, and she whispers: They must not forget me. But by now the doctor has bent all Thomas’s limbs and fitted them into the coffin in the way he wants. The policeman puts the lid on Thomas’s coffin. And here — Ella opens the blue folder lying beside the typewriter that is the property of the lodger or whoever is to follow him soon. She takes out the top sheet of paper. Last request. They wrote it on the typewriter, with the curving signatures of their names in pencil underneath. They want to be buried side by side. But loud as Ella speaks, even shouting, as she does now, no one listens to her. Marie’s coffin is closed as well, someone must have done it when Ella turned to the desk.

Ella knows that no one will carry out their wish. In her mind’s eye, she sees Marie’s husband, whom she has never met, wanting the body of his wife, arranging to have Marie’s body buried alone in a grave in some other cemetery in the city. But that, Ella knows, won’t prevent anything now, and she smiles. The living people can sometimes do as they like, but sometimes they can’t. She thinks: The two of you have the last word. They can bury your bodies separately, but you will love each other for ever.

Ella picks up the blue folder, climbs over the coffins, goes past the doctor and the policeman and out of Thomas’s room. She thinks: You are dead. At your funeral, someone will say they would have killed you with their ideas. They don’t know you well, they don’t know that you are here and we are talking to each other.

The author has taken the poems used in this novel, and the school essay of 3 January 1961, from the literary estate of Gottlieb Friedrich Franck.