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Collecting

Oppressive heat, the air flickering above the tramlines. Thomas was leaning against a lamp post, waiting for Marie. They had been working the early shift, and the afternoon was free. Thomas knew where Marie and her husband lived. But she had not let him take her home. In no circumstances was Thomas to be seen in Samariterstrasse, not by the neighbours or anyone else. No one was to tell her husband that she had been seen with the young man. Marie had told him to wait while she went home, packed bathing towels and fetched her little girl from the crèche at the end of the road, and then she and the child would come to the Frankfurter Tor underground station. The bathing beach by the Müggelsee would be overcrowded. Thomas wanted to show her the marshland, the little bay. No one would come upon them there, not Marie’s mother-in-law or her husband’s colleagues, and the husband himself was at work until six. Tuesday was the evening when he went drinking with his friends, and he wouldn’t be home before ten. Thomas felt uneasy; he still couldn’t think of Marie as a mother, his hands were sweating. A July day lay before them. Thomas watched the traffic; every few minutes a small column of cars came eastward here from Alexanderplatz, stopped at the traffic lights on the roundabout and clattered on. There was a smell of petrol. Thomas felt hungry. He went into the little greengrocer’s shop and bought a bunch of radishes and a bag of dried plums. There were no apples yet. He licked the stone of a sweet plum and looked at the time. Shouldn’t Marie have been back by now? He leaned against the lamp post again.

That morning, a young man in Room 1 had died; he hadn’t come round from an operation on his pancreas. He died while Thomas was tending his wound, without warning and without holding the hand of the wife he had married only a few months earlier, who had been visiting him at the hospital morning and evening. Thomas felt his life ebbing as he put fresh gauze on the wound. It was as if he felt the shadow of death even before he heard the breath drawn that was, although he didn’t know it, the patient’s last. He looked up and saw the man’s yellowish face, the eyes that had been looking at him just now had rolled aside, as if by chance. Thomas dropped the gauze, he had seized the man’s arm, crying out: Breathe!

The plum stone stuck to his gums. How much longer would Marie need? A brand-new Trabant stopped beside him, its engine chugging, pale vapour enveloping the vehicle like a cloud, and also enveloping Thomas and cutting off his view.

The men in the neighbouring beds had sat up, curious. They wanted to know what had happened. Thomas felt hot and cold by turns. Tears poured from his eyes. One of the patients made his way, with difficulty, out of bed and rang the bell for help. The bright white of the sheet hit Thomas in the eye, his retina hurt, his ears, everything about him felt sore. Never before had he felt such a strong sensation of misery. Lips now dry and cracked / once were fierce with lust / The mouth, a black sultry cavern / can’t even say Mother now. A nurse appeared and looked at him enquiringly. Should he smile, explain something that he couldn’t explain? Even his own helplessness, and this was not the first time he had felt it, seemed to him small and ridiculous in the face of the general helplessness and immense misery of the world. Let go of him, the nurse had told him with unusual emphasis; apparently she had had to repeat the remark several times, since Thomas had not done as she said. He had tried to open his hands, but they were stiff, it had been difficult for him to let go of the dead man. He felt humbled by nature, dismayed by mankind. Would the man have died if the operation had not been carried out? What was a body worth to scientific knowledge, what was experimental medicine worth, what was it worth to the man? Was he not, in the guise of curiosity, of bringing aid, of a better world, both discoverer and researcher, both a hypocrite and a destroyer? Never mind whether the name was Rutherford, Hahn, Meitner, Strassmann, or then again Mengele, Truman, Thomas. Who could tell a good intention from a bad one? Thomas felt queasy.

The engine of the Trabant flooded. Two men got out to remove something from the boot. Thomas must have been waiting for half an hour. The sun was hot, the black plums smelled almost alcoholic. In the distance Thomas saw two women in button-through dresses wheeling a large handcart full of children along. Thomas spat the plum stone out as far as he could; it landed in the tramline rails.

Man, in his hubris, thought that he could defy nature, domesticate it, that he was not just the slave of his curiosity, of his intentions, the moral value of which Thomas found it impossible to estimate. He bore the responsibility, whether he acted or was silent, whether he killed or died. Playing God, Michael had once said, meant ignoring all that. Thomas couldn’t do it, he was repelled by the jaunty gait of the surgeon with his stethoscope dangling on his chest like an order. Subduing the elements, splitting the atom, removing a thyroid here, part of a liver there, listening to hearts, and that was that, and what could you really ever expect to control? All that lives must die — passing through nature to eternity — from Shakespeare’s standpoint that might have been true. But recently mankind had set about eradicating things. Nature, eternity, perhaps life itself. It seemed to Thomas uncertain whether you could still think in harmony with nature and mean what Shakespeare made Queen Gertrude say. Wasn’t suicide, to Shakespeare, the opportunity to speed up a life played out in every spectrum?

The sun sparkled on the shining paint of the Trabant, dazzling Thomas. He was thirsty; the plums were sticking to each other in their bag. He hoped Marie would bring something to drink when she finally arrived. Thomas looked in all directions; perhaps the children at the crèche were on an outing, so Marie had to wait. He felt in his trouser pocket, but he had no cigarettes left. He had smoked them all that morning after the man died.

The white of the sheet had hurt his eyes so much that Thomas could see only a blurred image of the dead man, the yellow of his skin, the glittering of the fresh wound. He felt weak at the knees, his pulse was driving him out of himself. If he didn’t hold on to the bed he would collapse, fall over, now and next moment too. Marguerite daisies danced on the dead man’s bedside table, little brides of the sun. Hadn’t the surgeon spoken of making progress to the young wife? Told her what progress medicine had made, and surgery. His hands had relieved the man of part of his liver, and now the cure could proceed. Hypocrite. Thomas reached for the sheet and sat down on the young man’s bed. He felt a roll of something, the covers turned back under him, he heard Marie’s voice saying something to him, and he wanted to stand up, but he tipped over backwards and felt the dead man’s knees under his spine. Someone took his hand and touched his cheek. Thomas had not fainted although he felt faint. The marguerite daisies on the dead man’s locker bowed, fading in their dance. Thomas felt a sense of surfeit, felt that it was all too much. Who was going to tell the young man’s wife the news? He would never be able to work as a doctor himself. Go outside the door, get a breath of fresh air, Marie told him. He shook his head. He didn’t want to leave her alone, not with the nurse hurrying in, the woman doctor entering the room, and the dead man. He didn’t mind death, it was the living he minded. Thomas took a deep breath, wiped his face with his sleeve, wiped it dry. Marie tried reviving the dead man, but because of the gaping wound over his liver the procedure was difficult. The doctor gave instructions, Thomas was told to lower the raised bed by winding the handle. But when he let go of the handle and was standing upright by the bed again, the doctor too saw that the man was dead. He was to be laid out and taken away. Thomas helped Marie. She had put back the sheet and wheeled the bed out into the corridor. From there, the dead man would be taken to pathology as soon as the doctor had made out his file and the necessary forms. Marie sent Thomas back into the room to fetch the bedside table. The dead man’s wife had brought the marguerite daisies that morning, when Thomas was collecting breakfast crockery from the other beds. He had seen her taking the newspaper wrapping off the flowers and sitting down beside her husband’s bed, when she had looked at her watch. She probably had to keep an eye on the time, visit her husband only briefly before she went to work, and she couldn’t come back until evening. She had taken his hand and pressed it to her stomach. Her husband had said something quietly, whereupon she had kissed his forehead and his temples and said goodbye.

If you were standing on a large street on a July day, thirsty and waiting for Marie and a child you didn’t yet know, you could get dizzy with the heat and the exhaust fumes and the thought of the first person to die under your hand. Thomas rolled the bag up. He rubbed a radish on his trousers and put it in his mouth. To some extent, radishes could quench thirst.

What do we do with this? Thomas had held up the little beaker with the medicaments. For the first few days after a patient had had an operation, a higher dose of morphine was prescribed, mixed with a barbiturate meant to allow that patient to sleep in spite of the pain. Day by day the medicaments were weighed, measured and given out by the matron or Marie, on the doctor’s orders. Marie had taken the little beaker from Thomas, opened its screw top, looked inside as if to assure herself of something, and screwed it up again. She had put the beaker in the pocket of her white coat. He won’t have any more use for this now, she had whispered, what do you think?

Thomas had wiped down the bedside table, sorting out gauze, muslin bandages and tinctures on Marie’s trolley the way he had watched it being done for weeks now. He knew what order she arranged things in very well. As well as he knew her figure.

Now, even from a distance, he knew the way she walked, holding the hand of a little girl in a blue dress who must be her daughter. She was carrying a basket in her other hand. Thomas spat out the plum stone and went towards them.

He crouched down in front of the child and held the bag of dried plums out to her. But the little girl turned her face into Marie’s skirt, clutched her mother’s hand and rubbed her face hard against the back of it. She took a quick look at Thomas only for a tiny moment, and then immediately hid behind Marie’s hand again. Later, maybe, said Thomas, standing up, and he offered Marie the plums.

The tram made its way through the thickets of the city. It had an acrid smell of sweating skin clad in nylon. Later, in the suburban train, the windows were open and summer had taken up residence in the carriages. The little girl sat next to Marie, snuggling into the crook of her mother’s arm, and let Marie put a plum in her mouth. Marie had taken the stone out of the fruit with her finger. Suck it first, she told her child, don’t swallow the whole plum down, suck it first and then chew. With her fingertips, she searched her raffia basket for a handkerchief, but couldn’t find one. Thomas guessed what she was going to ask him, and had already tried his pockets. Sorry, he said.

She licked her fingers. Don’t look at me like that, she said, shifting back and forth in her seat, as if Thomas were embarrassing her.

She leaned her bare leg against his, while longing glances passed between them.

With a loud smacking noise, the child put her fingers in her mouth, took out the plum, and examined it until it slipped out of her hand. She tried to catch the plum as it fell on her dress, but it dropped on the dirty floor of the train. The child climbed down from the seat, crouched on the floor, pressed a finger into the plum and turned it over, rolled it back and forth until its black gleam was gone. You could pick up a plum like that even with one finger. The child put the fruit in her mouth and climbed back on the seat.

Under the tall elms in the shady marshland, the irises were still in flower, and countless midges settled on their skin. Marie carried the child in her arms over the marshy ground, once sinking in almost up to her knees. Thomas held her hand so that she could support herself. She had wrapped her little girl in a bathing towel to protect her from the midges.

Only by the lake, after the child had crouched on the bank for a long time kneading the wet sand, and had gone to sleep playing with Marie’s hair, did she ask whether he had brought the poems he had promised her. After they had bathed he could see her breasts. Now he was lying on his stomach to hide his arousal. The little girl was sucking her thumb in her sleep and clutching her mother’s hair tightly in her fist, as if afraid that she might go away.

They were alone beside the marshy bay. Thomas had been coming here for years. No one who bathed in the bay put a swimsuit or trunks on, but this was the first time that Thomas had been surprised by anyone’s nakedness. Often as Marie and he had been together over the last few weeks after work, sometimes lying side by side, touching and kissing each other, he had never seen her naked from a distance and in the open air; she was lying not an arm’s length away from him with her child, her skin dazzling in the sun. If he closed his eyes he had a black negative image of her. He preferred to close his eyes to hide the expression in them. Her skin was an almost translucent white, her nakedness seemed to him so new and unique that it was hard to imagine a husband. Thomas could not picture the man who saw her naked morning and evening whenever he wanted to, the man who would offer her to his colleagues for a quick fuck.

Don’t you want to? She removed the strand of hair from her child’s fist and began lovingly tickling the little girl’s nose with it. It was only when she raised her arm that he could see blue bruising on the inside of it where the husband or one of his friends must have grabbed hold of her.

Yes. He reached under the pile of clothes beside him, and a wasp rose in the air and flew a short way, only to come down again. The wasp bent its head, other wasps came in a curving flight to suck the dried plums. Thomas had forgotten to close the bag. He put his shirt to one side, felt around for his trousers and the pockets in them. He brought out several folded sheets of paper. Right, then; Thomas reassured himself that the little girl was still asleep between them. Forgive me, swerve away, flee / ecstatic death, from me. / Leave me, leave me here, / My life is sweet, is dear. // Do not force me from the light, / out and into the void of night, / I still have life in mind, / to death I am not inclined. / No, no, keep back but stay, / We will walk together for a way, / since a fight for life and breath / Can only end in death.

Marie had stopped tickling her child with her hair. The little girl was drawing short, quick breaths, her eyes moving under their lids. The oblivion of dreams. Thomas dared not raise his head higher to where he would see Marie’s breasts, and then her face.

What’s holding you back?

What was holding him back? Thomas was thinking of his mother; Marie could obviously read thoughts.

Will she cry?

No. Thomas flapped his hand to drive away a wasp that was now hovering in small circles above the little girl. Of course not. My mother says I would make her cry if I didn’t go along with her.

Go along with her? A smile flew briefly over Marie’s lips.

In general, in principle. Go along with her claims, her ideas for my future, for what will become of me. She only says that. I’ve never seen her in tears. Thomas stared at the blade of grass in front of his nose. She’s found me a place to study medicine now, and I tell her I can’t do it. She thinks I’m just a shirker, a freeloader.

Did she really say that?

Now Thomas did look at Marie’s face. Did she think I would invent such words, out of nothing? He, Thomas, the inventor of the word freeloader? Maybe he picked up words, used them, but he had certainly never invented a single word. Mother. I bear you like a wound / on my brow that will not close. Gottfried Benn. Did Marie know that poem by Benn? Was it the wound or the brow that wouldn’t close? Ultimately they were one and the same, and held neither pain nor thought intact within them, if in that way one is united with the mark of maternal pain. He was an empty husk, a husk carrying pain. Maybe Marie thought it wrong for him to repeat what his mother had said, for him to remember what had slipped out of her mouth, his mother’s words in Marie’s ear. Has your husband been hitting you? Thomas bit his tongue.

Marie did not seem startled by his answer, a question on a subject that she had never broached. Nor did she mind it. Her eyes were as clear as the lake. A wasp circled in the air between them and came down.

His elbow hurt where he had been propping himself on it for so long, holding the glance of Marie’s eyes.

Marie frantically waved her hand about to raise a little wind as the wasp came down on the child’s little head. Marie blew at it, but the wasp had settled on her little girl’s mouth. Perhaps its feet tickled, for the child’s head twitched, turned back and forth, she opened her eyes and, at the same moment, opened her mouth too in a shrill scream, a scream that turned to crying before the child ran out of breath. Now Marie touched the wasp with her fingers, but it had fastened firmly on the little girl’s lips. Thomas flicked his fingernail against the insect to make it fly up, a small scrap of skin in its jaws, leaving a tiny bleeding wound on the screaming child’s lips. Marie picked up her daughter and held her tight, comforting her, until tears were running down her own face. She kissed the child, sang to her, rocked her. The little girl gradually calmed down and soon fell asleep as if she had only been woken by a bad dream.

No one ought to say a thing like that to you — Marie put her hair back behind her ear — a mother doesn’t make fun of her child. The way she said that it sounded like an iron law. Teasing, yes. Oh, how my own mother teased me. But she never made fun of me.

What did I have in my head, I knew nothing at all about the world. You can’t do anything, you don’t know anything, in Käthe’s eyes and in her words he became nothing. He could hear her resolute voice.

Marie was still cradling her little girl.

And it’s true. I really can’t do anything. Thomas smelled Marie’s sweetish sweat, he saw the rocking movement that made her one with her child, a single body. He had never yet been one with someone else’s body, or not at least since his birth. Marie would not be able to release him like that, he was sure. Carefully, he folded up the sheet of paper with the poem and laid it among the other folded sheets. He had meant to read her some other poems.

I’ll be with you, said Marie suddenly.

You will?

Always.

Thomas had to smile. She leaned forward and came close to his face, the child that she was rocking between them, above the little girl her firm breasts, and her mouth approached his. But before their lips touched she drew back. The morphine that the man didn’t need today — Marie sat upright, holding her child close. It wasn’t the first time I’ve taken something away. Before you came, early in the year, I did that too. Only a small quantity, there can be inaccuracies in weighing the drugs out, so it didn’t appear in my poisons book. Marie wiped her little girl’s forehead, which was wet with sweat. My husband found it in my handbag and questioned me about it. I said it was something for a headache.

You can give it to me. I’ll keep it safe. No one searches my things, no one questions me like that.

Marie carefully put her little girl back on the towel and drew the wicker basket close to her. Reaching into it, she held the little screw-top beaker out and handed it to Thomas. You’ll look after it?

He nodded.

How much was there in the container? Marie had to keep meticulous notes every day of how much of what substance she took out of the poisons cupboard, how much she gave to which patient. If any was left over, that was supposed to be taken back and a note made of the amount too. But who was going to check up on whether the patient had taken the morphine to alleviate his pain before death so suddenly took him away? Who was going to check whether the prescribed, weighed-out amount had actually been given to a patient?

As if guessing his thoughts Marie said, sitting naked in front of him: It’s only a small amount, it won’t be enough yet, not by a long way.

Enough for what?

For disappearing. She wasn’t whispering. Her child was breathing steadily. She picked up her panties, put them on, and put her blouse on as well. She crouched beside the little girl and stroked her forehead, ran the tip of her forefinger over her eyelids, tracing the line of the pupils, caressing her eyebrows, her nose.

Thomas was able to sit up at last; he no longer had to conceal anything from Marie. The alders cast long shadows in the evening sunlight, and a wind rose; Marie had gooseflesh on her arms and legs. She had bruises on her legs as well. Why hadn’t he noticed those before?

Dreaming, that’s all, sleeping unaware of anything. Marie got to her feet. She brushed the soil off the sole of one foot with her hand, and slipped into her narrow lace-up shoes, one of which was still black where she had sunk into the marshy ground earlier.

Thomas watched Marie get into her skirt and do up the short zip. Something was fluttering inside him. He was overcome by fear that she would walk away now; he had to take her to the suburban train station and lose sight of her there. Her little girl was still asleep.

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.

Marie stopped. She put one hand against Thomas’s cheek, and gave her other hand to her daughter, who was now putting out a little arm to her mother. She opened her mouth and took a deep breath, but said nothing. Now the child was holding both arms out to Marie, so Thomas lifted her down from his shoulders and put her into Marie’s arms. The little girl looked curiously back, as if seeing Thomas only now and wondering what this young man looked like, the young man with whom she had spent the afternoon and who had carried her through the wood on his shoulders.

There, said the little girl, pointing to Thomas.

Instead of answering, Marie turned away with tears in her eyes. With the raffia basket over her arm and the child on her hip, she went on in the direction of the tram stop. The child kept her arms outstretched, looking past Marie’s shoulder and back at Thomas, who didn’t know what she wanted him to do.

I’ll go with you part of the way, said Thomas, following them. Wait, Marie, I can go part of the way into the city with you.

Marie hurried on, crossed the road, and Thomas followed her. You tell me, don’t go away, / but what would I have if we parted? He spoke softly to himself, reciting the lines he had written a few weeks ago, when he still thought that only time would show what became of them. Time on its own showed nothing, only the living had to part. I must go now, / you said, / and so it was indeed. / I could not hold you, there / was nothing I could do. / Those are laws not written by our love, / but laws that part us. He caught up with her at the tram. Let me come with you. He touched her arm. She was still wearing his pullover.

In the electric light of the tram a few people sat on their own, reading the newspaper and waiting for the tramcar to leave. Marie put her child down on the step up into the tram, with the raffia basket beside her, and took Thomas’s pullover off over her head. I love you, she whispered as she gave it to him, and got into the tram with her child and the basket. For the answer / is the end / of searching, of the question.

The buzz of the signal burned in Thomas’s ears, the doors closed, and the tram, squealing, began to move. He could just see Marie sitting down with her little girl before the tram went round the curve and disappeared past the trees. He had two days off ahead of him before he could see Marie again at the hospital on Friday.

By night Thomas found himself on the street. He was not wandering aimlessly; it was a compelling attraction against which he was powerless. He could sleep less and less often these days, and when he did sleep it was for only a few hours. He would board the last tram or walk through the wood to the suburban railway. You wept without a reason. / Do you believe in summer days, / or like me, see cold coming — / your face is far away. As if passing through a system of veins he went, never resting, on rails inside the brightly lit carriage into the city, capillaries all going the same way, Frankfurter Allee, Samariterstrasse, the stone of its pavement, Marie. Footsteps by night wear down stone outside the house — and if he did not look down at the pavement, he looked up at the two windows behind one of which he sometimes saw a faint light still on. I fear the mist around us, / do not keep looking round — / the planet on its axis / takes your face far from me.

In spite of the dusty warmth of the summer nights, by three or four in the morning at the latest Thomas was freezing, his hands trembling, and he would sit down beside the gutter diagonally opposite the building, making notes for his poems. His mingled fear and longing to see Marie, or perhaps not to see her, wore him out. The lights upstairs had gone off long ago, the windows were dark. He never heard Marie, which troubled him. Even when one of the windows up there was open, he did not hear her singing a lullaby to the little girl, however quietly, he did not hear her cry out when her husband hit her, he did not hear her speaking or weeping, and he had never heard her laughing. Was she asleep? Was he watching over her sleep there in the gutter? To light the dusty paving, / the way your steps have gone. / To bring warmth to it, / when you return, / I stand here smiling / still, and waiting / still, and I know / that there’s some sense / in it, in waiting, even where / no one has ever been, / even there. / And I am happy. In his trouser pocket, like a pledge, he felt the little beaker in which the white powder was collecting, milligram by milligram. The end is waiting there, / I do not know but do not fear it, / and there is sense in knowing, in believing. / So I go on and feel no weariness. As day began to dawn he would set off, worn out, on the way to Alexanderplatz, from where he sometimes took the first train back to Rahnsdorf, but he usually went straight to his shift at the hospital. I do not look around, for I know well, / deep silence follows, happiness, / and I know you, beloved, loneliness is strange, / and the sin of fear — that I have never known. So in the morning he would get out of the suburban train, the birds in the wood twittered, and coffee cups clattered on springtime tables when he reached the first cobblestones. He did not walk in fear now, but in great peace and certainty; how easily the handle of Käthe’s door opened, how the cold of the dark corridor surrounded him, and here he could rest, and if not sleep then rest without dreams. Days and nights I do not count, / you are with me, and a mighty sun / has risen, I do not doubt it, / and I can feel the freedom that is in me.

Oh, to break free of her, lose sight of her windows, rest his senses, walk away from her! He hardly knew where he could go. Was there a place without Marie? Where did he belong, if not with her? And I go on again / to the railway, to the cold. / I search every night for you, / every night I pass, awake, undreaming.

Once he reached Samariterstrasse in the middle of the night, and all the upstairs windows were brightly lit, voices and music spilled out into the street, seeped into his ears, clung to the dust. Thomas could not be sure whether it was Marie and her husband entertaining guests. He imagined them drinking, saw Marie being made to dance, her husband collecting money from his colleagues as they came out of the bedroom one by one, Often at times / I am afraid. / And when I stand like this, / my legs being made of stone / and so not tiring, / while the city holds me, / dusty as it is, / holds and embraces me / as if jealous of you, / then I’m afraid. / How, tell me how / I can be rid of the dust. When the voices were quieter, the music had been turned down, and the light went off upstairs, he saw a shadow that might be her husband’s at the window. A little later Thomas saw three drunks coming out of the house. He wanted to shout, to leap out, but he only ran up the street, and having reached the end of it, breathless, he slowed down, trotted, walked, then stood still and realised that he would not get away. Someone’s stuck up my mouth, / to keep me from crying out, / to keep me from crying out, with / sticking plaster, / sticking plaster, / on purpose, / on purpose . . His hand went into his trouser pocket and closed round the little beaker, her beaker, their beaker. He walked down the street again, calmly this time, and saw before he got there that her windows were dark and silent now. My legs are restless, my mouth is dry, / we walked the endless streets. Thomas went past and to the far end of the street, from where he would only have had to go along Frankfurter Allee to reach Alexanderplatz, but he went back and climbed the street the other way. We cry out questions / that torment us, / and stony silence echoes back; / who, oh child, has burdened you with guilt, / who will now show us the way? He was standing in the shadow of the entrance to the building opposite. Here he was invisible, no one saw his fear, only the glowing of his cigarette shining harmlessly in the dark. If he had been wearing heels, iron heels such as the whores at the entrance of a brothel in a harbour town had worn for decades and centuries, iron nails in high heels, waiting night and day — then the stone of the entrance would have given way, he would have bored holes in it on these nights. Eduard had told him about it once, about the deep holes in the marble threshold of a brothel. It was a long time since he had thought of Eduard, the old adventurer, the fallen warrior. Ella had felt sorry for him, she said, he had been stranded in the cold harbour, in Käthe’s surfeit, she had felt so sorry for him.

It was true, survival at any price wasn’t worth it. Thomas never wanted to be like that. Footsteps die away, we have reached the house, / the house with windows always blind / She will not stay for ever / but she will stay for now, will stay for now / wearing the heavy yoke for years. / Life groans only slowly by. .

There was a kitchen window looking out on the yard, and he sometimes took the entrance gate into the yard. He stood in the back entrance and looked up to the second floor, where the light in the kitchen was still burning. Perhaps it would burn until morning. Weren’t there people who left lights on at night? The moans of lovemaking echoed down, from whose window, where from? Once he had seen her at the window, closing it. Did Marie want him stealing around her apartment? She would certainly be afraid he would be seen, would be sleepless and freezing. I know the leaves rustle in the wind, / it is cold, they fall from the trees. / I have walked long enough, long enough. / I will go home now to my grave. / Like me, lost armies / grope, searching, through the void / I see their desires but / there is nothing I can do.

While Käthe was away working in Leuna for weeks, only sometimes coming to Berlin on a Sunday, the twins were brought back from their foster-family. All anyone could say about them was that they told lies, stole things, and fought. It was the summer holidays, so they didn’t have to go to school. Thomas had no idea what they did when he and Ella were at work. On his free days, and whenever he and Ella had time, he sat on the veranda with her preparing her to take the final school exams. Her evening classes were over now, and the exams were at the end of the month. Ella didn’t know very much. Thomas kept patiently explaining mathematics to her from the beginning, over and over again. For chemistry, he built a model from balls of clay and matchsticks. The clearer something seemed to Ella, the less she could remember it. Historical dates had been difficult; she simply couldn’t keep them in her head. Not even the date of the founding of the German Democratic Republic. Thomas told her to write little notes for herself. After each of his questions, Ella rummaged among the pile of notes on the table in front of her. Now he asked: The founding of the Republic?

But instead of the date, Ella said: I heard just now on Radio Free Berlin that they shot someone at the border yesterday. He was just eighteen, the same age as you.

What else?

They left him bleeding to death. Our border soldiers watched, the Americans watched. No one helped him.

Maybe he was lucky. Thomas yawned. He had no time for digressions; in an hour he must set off to work the late shift. Ella had better spend her time studying, he thought, not indulging in pointless thoughts.

Lucky?

Free for ever.

And I’ve been thinking recently, the odd way you’ve sometimes been behaving, said Ella, chewing her pencil and stripping the paint off it with her teeth, I’ve been thinking that you may have the same thing in mind.

What, getting out of here? Thomas shook his head. He couldn’t suppress a grin. Why would I make other people into murderers? He took the little beaker out of his trouser pocket, held it firmly and unscrewed the lid, then screwed it up again. And I couldn’t lie around somewhere on the beach of the Wannsee, knowing I’d never see any of you again. Thomas tried to make the beaker disappear inside his fist, but it was a little too large, or anyway he couldn’t close his fist round it entirely. Perhaps his left hand was larger than the right? When he looked up he saw that Ella had put her pencil down on the table and was picking her nose with relish. Hey, stop that, he said, trying to grip Ella’s wrist with one hand. Thomas hesitated. He felt some excitement at the idea of letting Ella into the secret. The way she rolled her eyes showed how little she thought of any of his existential questions. Here — he held the open beaker in front of her nose — freedom can be for ever.

Ella narrowed her eyes. She firmly turned away. What is that? Poison, am I right?

Poison, yes. The two of them spoke at almost the same time. Thomas screwed the lid on again, and put the beaker back in his trouser pocket.

Keeping it for yourself? Her lips were narrowed, she had closed her eyes as if she had just fallen asleep sitting where she was. She said nothing for quite some time. She had seen nothing and heard nothing. As if the tension between them had to relax, she let her lips tremble. Thomas remembered the horses that used to pass through the garden, whinnying and snorting, their muzzles distending when they galloped. Ella bared her teeth, pursed her lips, rolled them and then squeezed them tight, and finally said, very distinctly: 7 October 1949.

Good girl, good student. It was a part that she played especially for him, as Thomas knew. She wouldn’t hold him back; her own happiness was no more important to her than his. When did Ulbricht become head of state?

1960.

More precisely. What happened first, how did he do it?

Ella’s eyes were still closed. She spoke like someone conjuring up spirits — first Wilhelm Pieck died — and as if some higher being were whispering the answers to her. Two new committees were set up, she tentatively suggested, as if the higher being was giving only cryptic answers to those questions, and she couldn’t really understand what it was telling her. The Council of State and the Council of National Defence. And hey presto, Ulbricht was the first President of the Council of State.

Hey presto? That made Thomas laugh. Maybe you ought to mention one or two of the aims of the construction of the Socialist state?

I could, she claimed, having briefly opened her eyes and squinted at him to make sure he was laughing, after which she closed her eyes again and gave him a lopsided grin. But I’m not going to. I’m not going to take those exams. She folded her arms and pouted, like a defiant child.

You will take them, we’ll see about that.

I have to go and bathe now. Coming with me? And I’ve finally got hold of a bucket of paint. I’m going to start painting this evening. Don’t you want to see my apartment? Now she was gathering up the notes on the table and stuffing them into a large envelope.

Sorry, I have to get to the suburban train. I’m on the late shift all weekend.

Ella took note after note out of the envelope again, studied them as if looking for a particular question or answer. She had written on both sides of many of the notes, the question on one side, the answer on the other. 13 August 1961? Baffled, Ella held the note. Did she really not know what the question about that date could be? Cautiously, she turned the note over, then she folded it, tore it in half, and wrote something on the blank half.

Thomas stood up. He wanted to find out where the twins were before he had to go to work, since he would not be home until tomorrow morning.

Wait a minute. Ella held the note she had written out to him. He didn’t read it, but put it in his trouser pocket and went down the steps into the garden, where he had heard low voices. The twins were sitting on the bottom step, playing at kissing.