Christopher Kloeble - Almost Everything Very Fast

“I’ve never even heard of the place.”

“I’m Fred’s son.”

“Fred who?”

“Frederick Arkadiusz Driajes.”

“Don’t know him.”

“You were his nurse, nineteen years ago. He calls you the Red Lady. ”

“Must be a mistake.”

“I have a photo that shows you holding his hand.”

“You have no idea what I look like.”

“Maybe it’ll jog your memory when we come to see you.”

It was a bluff. Fred flatly refused to climb into a bus, and Albert had no driver’s license.

A short pause. “ Fred take a bus?”

A little sigh. “Okay. Call back in half an hour. Then we can talk.”

The telephone rang eight times before she answered.

“Just so we understand each other: I’ll tell you what I know, but after that, you have to promise to leave me in peace. And don’t come up here. No calls, no letters.”

“Fred’s going to die soon.”

“Okay,” she breathed into the receiver, “that sucks. What am I supposed to say? That I’m sorry? I’m sorry.”

“Why did you go away?”

“That sounds pretty damned reproachful. Let’s get one thing straight right away: I’m not your mother. Even if I’m sure that you aren’t going to believe me so easily.”

“No kidding.”

“Fine, you want more details. So you can convince yourself you know the whole truth. But I don’t believe I’m going to be much help to you. In your memory, the past is always a story , Anni used to say to me. In your memory, the past is always true. She churned out that kind of patter nonstop. You should be glad you missed most of her. There was a rage in her — she woke up with it first thing every morning, flailed it around her all day long, until she nodded off in the evening, so as to let it build again. Fred couldn’t take two breaths without her finding fault with him. Even when her voice gave out and she couldn’t manage more than this husky squawking, she never gave it a rest. On the contrary! Then she ramped it up even more. Spitting bile was her raison d’etre. Most of it landed on Fred. He completely knuckled under to her, indulged her every whim. Brought her tons of flowers, and quoted her at every opportunity. Mama says this and Mama says that. As if she’d rewritten the Bible. I felt sorry for him. I’d just finished my nursing exams and still hadn’t caught on to the fact that you can’t have sympathy for your patients. Sympathy only causes problems. But that’s exactly what Anni used to lure me in. She wanted me as a helper, because she couldn’t deal with Fred and you on her own.”

“Did she ever tell you who my mother was?”

“No.”

“People must have asked.”

“Of course. But that’s precisely why she picked me for the job. My red hair, not my references, were what decided it. She announced on the spot, during the interview, that she’d hire me. On the condition that, if anyone asked, I’d pass myself off as your mother. I should have simply walked out right then, but instead I explained to her that I had a bad feeling about the whole business. I figured she’d tell me to leave. Instead she listened to me, without interrupting once, and when I’d finished she gave me a hug, as if we’d come to some agreement. I was just the one she was looking for. Next thing I knew, she was ushering Fred and me outside so she could take a picture of us, demanding that we hold hands, which was awkward for both of us since we didn’t know each other at all, but I figured it would make the old lady’s day. Her excitement made me think seriously about the job.

“From then on she wouldn’t leave me alone. Day in, day out, she called me up, begging me to take the position.

“One day she actually posted herself in front of my door and implored me. I wouldn’t have to feel like a mother to you, just worry about Fred. She’d take care of you herself. No responsibility on my part. No burden. No stress. Though of course I’d always be welcome to change your diapers, if I felt like it. She assured me you’d be such a lovely son, a gorgeous son. And she said something else, which I still remember today: that you weren’t a Klöble. When I asked her what that was, a Klöble, she just shook her head — she had a tremendously persuasive way of shaking her head — and said, Some other time.

“The next day, I decided to start. In the end, I believe it wasn’t so much a decision in favor of your family — on the contrary, it was a decision against not helping you.”

Albert didn’t want to believe a word of it. Britta Grolmann had ample reason to lie to him. But as hard as he searched for signs of it, this time her voice wasn’t shaking at all. An empty, anticlimactic sensation pervaded him. “How long did you stay in Königsdorf?”

“Not even three weeks.”

“What happened?”

“At the beginning I tried to keep Fred from going out to the bus stop. I mean, sometimes it was just coming down cats and dogs. It didn’t make sense to me, him standing around pointlessly out there, waving at cars and catching cold. Also, most of the folks in the village didn’t take kindly to it. They saw him as not right in the head, unpredictable. Hero or not. Parents didn’t let their children wait for the bus alone anymore. Naturally, nobody said anything. They all just stood around, more people than were actually planning on going anywhere, watching Fred from the corners of their eyes. Fred was pleased as punch. Almost twice as many people are waiting for the bus, and if something happens again, I can be twice as much of a hero! I didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth.

“Instead, I tried to distract him. Invited him to help me make breakfast, or polish shoes, or weed the garden. For a while, it worked perfectly. He isn’t as clumsy as people think. Thanks to him, everything went faster. But after nearly a week without any excursions to the bus stop, Fred wouldn’t get up in the morning. I didn’t know what to do. I tempted him with his favorite food, pancakes with raspberry jam. I promised him he could clean the dust out of the corners of the living room — he liked the sound the vacuum made sucking up dirt. I even offered to read to him from the encyclopedia. No dice. He burrowed down in the bed and didn’t shower anymore and couldn’t even be persuaded to eat anything. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was depressed.

“It was only when Anni kicked him, literally, out of bed, and forced him to get dressed and tramped out to the bus stop with him, it was only then that things got better. She pointed her finger at me, said I shouldn’t meddle with him anymore. I tried to explain to her that I’d only meant well. To which she replied, only she knew what was good for Fred. Conceited old witch. But she wasn’t so wrong about that.

“After two or three days Fred was back in his old rhythm, counting green cars, and had found his smile again. It was the worst thing that could have happened. If Fred hadn’t been happy again, then we wouldn’t have had so much fun together, and if we hadn’t had so much fun together, then …

“In the handful of days that I was with them, the two of us spent a lot of time together. Fred took me with him on walks and counted green cars, which I noted in his diary. Or he’d lift me up so I could clean the top panes of the windows, so easily, as if I weighed nothing at all. And he introduced me to a horse that he visited all the time, and fed her fresh weeds.

“And one Thursday, I still remember perfectly, he showed me his Most Beloved Possession. It was dark, and we sat in his BMW, the Speedster, as he called it, which was already more or less in ruins. I don’t even want to imagine what it looks like now — if it even exists anymore. Fred showed me a tin box where he kept a lump of gold. An enormous thing. He held it up to the light, gently, as if it were a premature baby, and he seemed so happy that he was able to share this secret with me. I liked that, that closeness. Fred made me feel like I was the only other person on the planet. I didn’t care whether or not the gold was real. It seemed real to me. I could have asked Anni, of course, but after that night I barely had an opportunity.