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Loving

Müggel Schnüggel Flüggel, the rising sun had set the lake on fire. Ella was swaying, and in her dizziness she put one foot carefully in front of the other to reach the water. The sand was soft, and still cool with morning. The long pine needles of the Brandenburg Mark gave way under her bare feet. Ella was thirsty, she wanted to wash the acidity off her face. Was it only the wine, or had she thrown up while half asleep?

She put her right foot in the water first. Thomas would have stepped in with his left; as a left-hander, he favoured his left foot. The lake was still warm from summer. Her legs didn’t want to walk, didn’t want to stand. Ella lay down in the lake.

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.

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.

Ella went into the kitchen, where she found plates with remains of food on them and a pan, in which the twins had obviously cooked something up for themselves the evening before. She washed the plates and ran water into the pan to soften the residue. She plugged in the little kitchen immersion heater, but when the water boiled she just pulled out the plug and didn’t make tea. Back in the smoking room the twin on the sofa stretched, made a lip-smacking noise, yawned and opened her eyes. Why are you back again? asked the twin, seeing Ella sitting at the table in one of the deep armchairs.

I just am. Ella was cleaning her fingernails with one of the plastic sticks out of the Mikado game.

The twin stood up, nudged her sister with her foot, and disappeared into the kitchen. I’m hungry too, called the other twin from the floor, wait for me. She got up and ran after her sister. A bumblebee was buzzing against the windowpane between the smoking room and the veranda. Ella got out of her chair and opened the French door so that the bee could fly out. Ants had formed a little procession on the veranda table; maybe it hadn’t been wiped down. Once on the veranda, Ella saw that the door to the garden staircase was open. When Käthe was at home she always made sure that all the doors were closed at night. She did not lock them with their keys; she was not afraid of anyone breaking in, but the wind disturbed her, and she didn’t want birds and mice coming in from the garden. Now that the night was over that door might as well stay open.

Give it to me, shouted one twin to the other. It’s not fair, you’re taking a second bite! But the first twin held onto the bread crust and wouldn’t hand it over. The crust was so hard that Ella could hear the girl’s teeth crunching on it. Ow! Stop scratching me, shouted one of the girls, and Ella heard the thud of a blow. She stood in the doorway between the smoking room and the veranda. A squabble broke out, one girl hitting, the other maybe pinching, calling each other names that Ella didn’t understand. They were animals communicating only through sounds and noises. As soon as you intervened in their fighting and bickering they would gang up together against you as the supposed aggressor. Ella’s eyes fell on the long wooden ladder leaning on its side against the wall under the windows. They used it for gathering walnuts from the tree in autumn, and for apples. Ella picked up the ladder, which was not particularly heavy, but long; it must be twice as long as Ella was tall. It might be long enough. With the ladder over her shoulder, and walking carefully so as not to knock it against the bookcase or the pictures on the veranda, Ella went to the garden steps.

What are you doing? Are you picking apples already?

The twins came running up and watched Ella manoeuvring the ladder down the steps.

Can we pick apples too?

They’re not ripe yet, said Ella, when she had the ladder down the steps.

Then what are you doing?

Ella did not reply; she put the ladder over her other shoulder and went round the house through the garden. She carried the ladder to just under Thomas’s window and put it up against the wall there.

Are you going up the ladder? What are you doing?

The second rung was broken. Ella stepped over it and onto the third, climbed the ladder, and held herself in position with one hand on the frame of the open window so that she could pull herself up on the sill. Down below the twins were calling that they wanted to come up as well, but one of the sisters didn’t dare to because of the broken rung, and the other was trying to persuade her to climb it all the same. Ella was now wedged into the narrow space where the window was open. She got hold of the inside catch, opened the window fully, and jumped down into the room.

It was a moment before she could make out the scene before her inside the black walls. She saw a long, narrow back, a woman’s bare buttocks, her legs, one of them bent at an angle. One of her arms was hanging down from the bed, the other lay on the sheet. She was lying face down on something that also had arms and legs, and whose head was half hidden by her long hair. Ella knelt down beside Thomas’s bed, took hold of the long hair and pushed it aside. His open lips are hardly recognisable; something white is coming out of them, something soft that makes Ella think of a cloud or of mould. When Ella lets go of Marie’s hair she touches her arm, which is not really so much hanging off the bed as sticking out stiffly, it is cold, colder than the temperature in the room, colder than a stone would be if these two people had been carved out of stone, and the end of it, where the curled hand almost touches the floor, is a dark colour. Ella thinks of Käthe, who will come home from Leuna this morning.

Ella-a-a-a! Ella-a-a-a! Outside, the twins are calling her in unison, the same voice, the same word, the same impatience.

Sunlit motes of dust dance in the air.

No, says Ella, or maybe she just thinks No. She holds her left hand open and puts Marie’s hair over it, strand by strand, holds it firmly, and looks at what is coming out of Thomas’s mouth. His eyes are not quite closed.

She touches his forehead with her fingers. His forehead is cool. She touches the arm lying beside him; it may have slipped out just a few minutes ago from under the body lying on top of him. His arm is not cool, it seems to Ella almost warm, warm enough to move. But nothing is moving.

Is that a sound?

Ella’s eyes fall on the bottle of wine, which is almost empty, a single glass stands beside the bed, they were probably both drinking from it. She lets go of Marie’s hair.

Here I am, says a twin from the window — the curtain is still billowing between them. Ella gets up, goes over to the window and stands in front of it. The girl is standing at the top of the ladder, but she doesn’t know how to haul herself over the sill, her arms are too short. She is smiling mischievously.

Climb down, Ella tells her sister. Go on, get down that ladder.

The other girl is waiting at the bottom, holding the ladder firmly with both hands. Come on down.

The twin nimbly climbs backwards down the ladder. Ella looks at the bed with the two bodies on it. Stark naked. Why does that term occur to her? Is there a difference between naked and stark naked?

Thomas’s trousers are hanging over the arm of the chair. Ella picks them up, put her hand into one of the pockets, where she finds some folded sheets of paper, and reads. And who will sit / in judgement on us? / You who see us, / do not forget, / we love each other. She stuffs them back and tries the other pocket. She knows what she will read on the small, torn-off note: Coming to my house-warming on 1 September? Please do! And bring Marie with you. She puts the note in her own trouser pocket and arranges Thomas’s trousers as neatly as possible on the chair again. Her glance falls on Marie’s dress hanging over the other chair-arm, a special dress, dark blue with a black velour pattern that Ella would like to touch, a tiny pair of panties on top of it, like a child’s, a little vest with thin shoulder straps. She has arranged her sandals as a pair so that the toes are touching. They are probably closer together than people’s feet could ever stand wearing shoes.

Are you coming, Ella? The twins down in the garden are getting impatient. Ella goes to the window and pushes the curtain aside. Since when were colours so pale? Ella sees the dry grass with spots before her eyes. She climbs out on the windowsill and from there to the ladder.

The twins wait until Ella has reached the bottom.

Well? asks one twin, and then they both ask together: Are they dead?

Ella takes the ladder away; uncertain whether or not to carry it back to the veranda, she lets it fall in the grass. She walks off.

You’re crying, says one of the twins, going along beside Ella and observing her with unconcealed curiosity. Why are you crying? asks the other twin, trotting along behind them.

A car clatters over the cobblestones. Ella walks along beside the wall of the house as far as the corner, but she doesn’t want to go into the garden now. She goes back, past the twins, who are sitting in the grass beside the ladder. What are we going to do now? asks the first twin. Wait for Käthe, says the second twin.

Without a word, Ella leaves the twins sitting in the grass and goes round to the other side of the house and the entrance to the yard. Didn’t Käthe take her car to the garage before going to Leuna? Has she had her motorbike repaired? It’s been standing in the shed without a back wheel for the past year or so, going rusty. Ella hears the distant squealing of the tram. They can go to meet it. It’s true that Ella does not know exactly when and by what means Käthe will arrive, but she must be here some time in the next few hours. Ella and the twins walk up and down outside the house. When a car passes once, the twins wave to it wildly, as if a steamer were sailing past on the bank. Ella sits down on the sandy path. She leans against the fence, folds her arms over her knees and puts her head down on them. She will look up only when one of the twins calls: Käthe! Until then she can count elephants to her heart’s content. One of them has an almost purple skin, but that could be because of the sun burning down on it. The air above the asphalt flickers. Aren’t the elephants thirsty? They are sinking into fluid tar with their heavy legs. Even making a great effort, they can’t move from the spot, the tar around their legs is sticking them to the ground.

Here comes Käthe! Ella hears the twins calling. She’s coming, she’s coming! And they add: Come on, let’s go and meet her.

Ella’s arm is wet. She stands up, wipes her tears from it with the other arm, and with small steps, swinging her arms, waving her trunk, she follows the twins, who are running towards a woman coming from the tram stop, loaded down with a rucksack and a heavy bag, tottering as she passes the mill on the way towards them.

Thomas is dead, whispers Ella, but Käthe doesn’t see her, looks past her, it is not clear whether she heard what Ella said. Or did Ella only think she said it?

Can’t someone take this bag? says Käthe to the twins, putting the heavy bag down in the middle of the front doorway. Go into the studio, you can make something with the clay in there. The twins do not obey. They are running back and forth between Käthe and Ella, until Käthe gives one of them a shove because apparently she trod on Käthe’s toes. Didn’t I tell you to go down? Out of here! Käthe grabs the twins by the scruffs of their necks, like kittens; holding them like that she takes them through the smoking room to the back door and right through the kitchen. She opens the nearest door, takes the twins by their wrists, hauls them over to the staircase leading down to the studio. You two stay here until I call you. And she shuts the door behind them, even turning the key, as if the twins couldn’t get back into the house any time by going out of the studio door and across the yard.

Käthe telephones, she goes to the toilet, she leafs through her post stacked on the table in the smoking room. She brushes the badminton racket off her chair so that it falls to the floor, and sits down. Soon after that she goes into the kitchen and runs water from the tap. When the bell rings she opens the front door. She points to the door they want and goes back into the kitchen, where she finishes her glass of water.

And what are you doing, running about after me all the time? Ask the men if they’d like some coffee. Take them the sheet they asked for.

Ella opens the dark linen cupboard that stands in one corner of the smoking room. The telephone rings. Käthe goes to answer and says, into the receiver, of course I haven’t forgotten the meeting. . yes. . no. With the sheet over her arm, Ella opens the door into the corridor. The men have broken down the door of Thomas’s room. First there were only two policemen, now a doctor has joined them. Ella looks through the open doorway into the room. The doctor gives instructions. Can she spread out the sheet on the floor beside the bed? Ella nods vaguely; of course she can do that. She shakes out the sheet until it is lying flat and smooth on the bouclé rug. The doctor has asked one of the policemen to lend a hand. It isn’t easy; they try it from different angles, but the bodies are stiffly entwined. Maybe here? Ella hears the policeman ask, and sees him about to take hold of the hip of Marie’s body. The doctor advises the shoulders. Will it take long, will it take minutes, will it take for ever? They are clasping each other tightly. When they lift Marie’s body off Thomas, it turns out that her radiant white skin, still dazzling on her back, is discoloured on her front; there are dark, purple, almost black marks on her stomach and her breasts. Carefully, the two men lay Marie’s body on the flat sheet.

The doorbell is ringing again. Ella goes to the front door, opens it and lets the new men in. Carrying huge zinc tubs, they knock into things all over the place, there is much clattering and clanking.

The first policemen tell their colleagues they can put the coffins down and wait out in the yard; they haven’t finished in here yet. Can they leave the coffins down in the bathroom, or where? Ella nods uncertainly. She approaches the bed and sits down at the far end, beside Thomas’s feet. On the floor, the doctor is examining Marie’s body, pressing his thumbs down on various parts of her stomach. He examines her eyes, and tries to look inside her mouth with a small flashlight. He has put down his stethoscope; it is hanging over Thomas’s trousers on the arm of the chair.

Käthe stands in the doorway for a moment, hands on her hips. Come out of there, Ella, she says, come here, you’re getting in the way. Ella stands up. One of the policemen is sitting at Thomas’s desk, noting something down on a form. Do you have a goodbye letter? Now he looks at Käthe and Ella, who stand motionless in the doorway watching what is going on.

A goodbye letter? Suddenly Käthe is weeping. She shakes her head. Has Ella ever seen Käthe shed tears before?

A note, a letter, anything. Did the dead couple give any advance notice of their intentions?

Advance notice? Now Käthe is weeping uncontrollably. My boy.

Ella puts her arm round little Käthe, but Käthe is still shivering, her tears are shaking her where she stands in the doorway, my boy, my boy. She does not return Ella’s embrace in any way. It is as if she were standing there alone, as if she neither notices Ella’s arm nor understands the policeman’s question, nor can she answer it. Ella tries to hold on to Käthe, but it is impossible, Käthe is trembling so much that Ella slips down past her, past the strong shoulders, past the huge, heaving bosom, there is nothing for Ella to hold on to, her legs feel weak, they give way, and Ella is sitting on the floor, she crawls out into the darkness of the corridor, where people come and go, come to parties, go away, come on visits, she lies on the floor under the coat stand.

Now the doctor would like to have one of the zinc coffins brought in, and asks the policeman to go into another room to question the relations. Would you please follow me? says the policeman, as he passes Käthe. But Käthe still stands in the doorway, my boy, she weeps and weeps, my boy.

Only when the policeman takes her arm and she tears herself away does she precede him into the smoking room. Ella watches their feet touching the ground, being raised off it again, coming back down, the policeman’s large feet in gleaming black shoes, Käthe’s tiny sandals.

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.