The Blind Side of the Heart

THE WORLD IS ALL BEFORE US

Two girls lay on a white-enamelled metal bedstead, taking turns to put their bare feet against the warm copper of the hot-water bottle. The little one kept trying to get the bottle over to her side of the bed, pushing with her toes and shoving with her heels. However, at the last moment her sister’s long leg would stop her. Helene admired the length of Martha’s legs and her slender, graceful feet. But the apparently effortless determination with which Martha claimed the hot-water bottle for herself, against Helene’s wishes, drove her to despair. She braced her hands against her sister’s back and tried to find a way for her cold toes to get past Martha’s legs and feet under the heavy covers. The candlelight flickered; every breath of air caused by the scuffling under the blanket as it suddenly rose and fell made the flame gutter. Helene wanted to laugh and cry at once in her impatience, she compressed her lips and reached out for her sister, whose nightdress had ridden up, so that Helene’s hand came down on Martha’s bare belly, Martha’s hips, Martha’s thighs. Helene wanted to tickle her, but Martha twisted and turned, Helene’s hands kept slipping away, and soon Helene had to close her fingers and pinch to get hold of any part of Martha at all. There was a tacit agreement between the two sisters: neither of them must utter a sound.

Martha didn’t cry out, she just held Helene’s hands tight. Her eyes were shining. She squeezed Helene’s hands between hers so hard that her finger joints cracked, Helene squealed, she whimpered, Martha squeezed harder until Helene gave up and the little girl kept whispering: Let go, please, let go.

Martha smiled. She wanted to read a page or so of her book now. Her little sister’s blonde eyelashes fluttered, the curve of her eyes showed under them. How fine the network of veins was round the eye. Of course Martha would forgive Helene sooner or later. All this just because of a copper hot-water bottle at their feet. Helene’s pleading was a familiar sound, it soothed Martha. She let the little girl’s hands go, turned her back to her sister and pulled the quilt away with her.

Helene was freezing. She sat up. And although her hands still hurt she reached out with them, touched Martha’s shoulder and took hold of her thick braid, which had little curls escaping from it everywhere. Martha’s hair was both soft and unruly, almost as dark as their mother’s black hair. Helene liked to watch when Martha was allowed to comb Mother’s hair. Then Mother would sit with her eyes closed, humming a tune that sounded like a cat purring. She purred contentedly in several different musical registers while Martha brushed and combed her thick, long hair, grooming it like an animal’s coat. Once Helene had been at the sink washing a sheet, and when all the soap was rinsed away she wrung it out over the big bucket, taking care not to splash any water on the kitchen floor. It was only a matter of time before Mother cried out. Her cry was not a high, clear sound, but low and throaty, uttered with the fervour of some large animal. Mother reared. The chair she had just been sitting on crashed to the floor. She pushed Martha away, the brush fell to the floor. She flailed out with her arms, violent, aimless movements, her hairslides and combs flying off the table, she hooked her foot round the chair, picked it up and flung it in Helene’s direction. Her loud cries reechoed as if the earth itself had opened up and was growling. The crochet work lying on the table shot right across the room. Something had pulled a strand of Mother’s hair, tweaking it.

But while Mother shouted at her daughters, cursing them, complaining that she’d given birth to a couple of useless brats, Helene kept on and on repeating the same thing like a prayer: May I comb your hair? Her voice quivered: May I comb your hair? As a pair of scissors flew through the air she raised her arms to protect her head: May I comb your hair? She huddled under the table: May I comb your hair?

Her mother didn’t seem to hear. Not until Helene fell silent did Mother turn to her. She bent over to see Helene under the table more clearly. Her green eyes were flashing. Stop that, snorted Mother. Straightening up, she brought the flat of her hand down on the table so hard that it must have hurt her. Helene had better come out from under that wretched table this minute. She was even clumsier than her big sister. Martha looked at the girl with the bright golden curls crawling out and carefully standing up as if she were a stranger.

You want to comb my hair, do you? Mother laughed nastily. Huh, you can’t even wring out the laundry properly! Mother snatched the sheet out of the bucket and flung it on the floor. Maybe your hands are too fine for such work? Mother gave the bucket a vigorous kick, and then another, until it fell over with a clatter.

Helene instinctively jumped and flinched away. The girls knew their mother’s fits of rage well; it was only when they came on so suddenly, without the slightest warning, that they were taken by surprise. There were tiny bubbles on their mother’s lips, new ones formed, shining. There was no mistaking it, Mother was actually foaming at the mouth, seething, boiling over. Slavering, she raised her arm. Helene stepped sideways and grasped Martha’s hand. Something brushed Helene’s shoulder in passing and, as Mother screeched, clattered to the floor and broke in half. Glass shattered. Thousands of tiny splinters of glass, thousands upon thousands. Helene whispered the unimaginable, incredible number, thousands upon thousands. Thousands upon thousands of them glittering. Mother must have snatched her Bohemian glass vase off the dresser. Helene wanted to run away, but her legs felt too heavy.

Mother doubled up, sobbed and sank to her knees. The broken glass must be coming through the fabric of her dress, but that didn’t bother her. Her hands ploughed through the green splinters and the first blood sprang between her fingers; she cried like a child in a thin little voice, asked if no damn God would help her; she whimpered, and finally she kept on stammering the name Ernst Josef, Ernst Josef.

Helene wanted to bend down, kneel beside her mother, comfort her, but Martha firmly held her back.

This is us, Mother. Martha spoke sternly and calmly. We’re here. Ernst Josef is dead, like your other sons, he was born dead, do you hear me, Mother? Dead, ten years ago. But we are here.

Helene could hear the anger and indignation in Martha’s voice. It wasn’t the first time she had faced up to their mother.

Ah! Mother cried out as if Martha had thrust a dagger into her breast.

Martha went out of the room, taking Helene with her.

Nauseating, whispered Martha, we really don’t have to listen to such things, little angel. Come on, let’s go.

Martha put her arm round Helene. They went into the garden and hung out the washing.

Again and again, Helene felt impelled to look up at the house, where Mother’s wailing and screaming could be heard through the open window, but dying down now and becoming intermittent, finally stopping altogether, so that Helene was afraid their mother had bled to death or done herself some really serious injury.

And in addition Helene thought, as she sat up in bed beside Martha, that perhaps their mother assumed her screaming might work only in front of the children. On her own, it must seem pointless. What use was screaming if there was no one to hear you? Helene shook herself, she felt so cold, and touched her sister’s braid, the braid that put out tiny curls, soft, fine little curls, the braid that was part of her kind sister who always protected her in any difficulty.

I’m freezing, said Helene. Please let me come in with you.

And she was glad when the mountain of bedclothes in front of her opened and Martha reached out a hand, holding the quilt up with her arm so that Helene could get underneath it and snuggle down. Helene nuzzled her nose into her sister’s armpit, and when Martha went back to her book Helene pressed her face into her back, taking deep breaths of the warm, familiar scent. Helene wondered whether she ought to say her bedtime prayers. She could always fold her hands. She felt good. A surge of gratitude passed through her, but she was grateful to Martha, not God.

Helene played with Martha’s braid in the shadow cast by the candlelight. Its muted glow made her hair look even darker than it was; those tiny curls were almost black. Helene stroked her forehead with the end of Martha’s braid; the hairs tickled her cheeks and ears. Martha turned a page of her book and Helene began counting the freckles on her sister’s back. Helene counted Martha’s freckles every evening. Once she was sure of the number on her left shoulder as far as the birthmark at the top of her spine, she moved the braid aside and counted the freckles on Martha’s right shoulder. Martha didn’t object; she turned another page and chuckled softly.

What are you reading?

It’s not your sort of book.

Helene loved counting. It was exciting and soothing. When Helene went to the baker’s, she counted the birds she saw on the way to the shop and the people she met on the way back. If she left the house with her father she counted the number of times his big sandy dog Baldo lifted his leg, and how often people greeted them, and she liked to score high numbers. Once she played them off against each other: each greeting cancelled out one lift of the dog’s leg. Now and then acquaintances addressed Helene’s father as ‘Professor’, which was more an expression of flattery than a misunderstanding. Everyone knew that although Ernst Ludwig Würsich had been publishing philosophical and literary books for some years now, setting them in his printing works, that didn’t make him a professor. Mayor Koban stopped and patted Baldo’s head. The two men discussed the number of copies of the commemorative Town Council volume to be printed, and Koban asked Helene’s father what kind of dog his was. But Father always declined to speculate on the mixture of breeds in Baldo and just replied: A good dog.

Helene was surprised to see how many of their acquaintances hurried past in silence as soon as she came out into the street with her mother. Mother herself didn’t seem to notice. Helene counted quietly, in secret, and often she scored no more than a single greeting. Frau Hantusch the baker’s wife, who almost hugged Father when they met, didn’t even look at mother and daughter. Instead she lowered her umbrella slightly, holding it in front of her like a shield to make sure that no glances were exchanged. Helene supposed it must have been Martha who once told her that Mother wasn’t really known as Frau Würsich at all. The people who lived in Tuchmacherstrasse spoke of her as ‘the foreign woman’. It was true that she had married that highly regarded citizen of Bautzen Herr Würsich the master printer, but she was still a foreigner, even behind the counter of his printing works or out in the street with their daughters. Although it was very usual in Lusatia for couples to marry in the bride’s home town, even ten years after the marriage there was still gossip about the origins of this particular bride. It was said that husband and wife had been married at a registry office in Breslau. A registry office — there was a dubious sound about that. Everyone knew that the foreign woman didn’t go to St Peter’s with her husband on Sundays. Rumour said she was ungodly.

Her daughters had been baptized in the cathedral, but that made no difference. The inhabitants of Bautzen obviously felt that a wedding not celebrated in church tainted their own respectable reputation. No one would deign to pass the time of day with the foreign woman. Every glance was accompanied by whispering and a disapproving shake of the head, even if Selma Würsich couldn’t meet that glance because, with wise foresight, she paid more attention to the rare finds she might spot on the paving stones than to the citizens of the town. Whether proudly or awkwardly, the people in the street ignored Helene and her mother, looking over the head of the woman crouching on the ground or right through her. If Helene met her father’s friend Mayor Koban while she was holding her mother’s hand, the mayor crossed the road without a word. Judge Fiebinger’s sons laughed and turned to stare, because they thought the flimsy fabrics Mother wore in summer were improper and her voluminous skirts in winter odd. But Mother seemed to notice none of this. She bent down, radiant, and showed Helene a little glass bead she had found. Look, isn’t that lovely? Helene nodded. The world was full of treasures.

Whenever Mother left the house she collected things she found on the ground — buttons and coins, an old shoe that looked as if it had another few months’ wear in it, perhaps it would be good for something, at least the shoelace was new, unlike the sole, and the hooks on the upper part seemed to Mother very rare and particularly valuable. Even a coloured piece of broken china down by the river would elicit a cry of delight from her if its edges were washed smooth by the water. Once, right outside their door, she found a goose’s wing that could be used as a feather duster and wept tears of emotion.

On that occasion Martha had said it was more than likely that someone had left the feather duster there on purpose, just to see the foreign woman bend down and pick it up. The feathers were already worn short with use, and several of the quills stuck out like broken teeth, shiny and bare.

Mother collected such feather dusters, although she seldom used them. She hung up the birds’ wings on the wall over her bed. A flock of birds to escort souls, that was how she described her collection. Only wings that she had found herself earned a place there above her bedhead. There were nine now, this one included, and she was hoping for a tenth. Once there were ten, she could complete the twenty-two letters of the alphabet and cast light on the roads ahead, as she put it. Neither of her two daughters asked where which souls were coming from and where they were to be escorted. The significance of a wandering soul, founded on or borrowed from the idea of parallel worlds, seemed to them eerie. It implied that side by side with their own world, where an inanimate object was an inanimate object and a living being a living being, there was another in which a reciprocal relationship between lives and objects existed. Helene covered her ears. Wasn’t it difficult enough even to imagine what a soul was made of? And what might happen to a soul if it went wandering? Did it stay the same soul, individual, identifiable? Were we really destined to meet again in another world at a given time? That was what Mother threatened them with. When I’m dead we’ll meet again, we’ll be united. There’s no escaping it. Helene was so scared that she didn’t want to know any more about souls. Mother knew of an alleged purpose for every object, inventing one if necessary. Over the years of her marriage the house had filled up with things, not just in the closets and glass-fronted cupboards; a landscape with a will of its own was always threatening to grow in the attic among the pieces of furniture there. Mother laid out hills and mounds of objects, collections of items for purposes both certain and uncertain. Only Marja the housekeeper, who was called Mariechen by her employers and was no more than a few years older than Mother herself, managed, by dint of great patience and perseverance, to create any visible kind of order in some of the rooms. Mariechen ruled the kitchen, the dining room and the narrow stairs to the two upper storeys. In Mother’s bedroom, however, and the room next to it you could hardly find any path to tread, and there was seldom a chair clear enough for anyone to sit on it. Mother collected branches and pieces of string, feathers and pieces of fabric, and no broken china could be thrown away; no box, however battered; no stool eaten away by woodworm, even if it wobbled because one of the rotten legs was now too short. If Mariechen turned anything out of the kitchen Mother took it to the upstairs rooms, where she would deposit the pan with the hole in it or the broken glass, confident that one of these days she would find a place and a use for the item. No system was discernible in her collection, only Mother herself had any idea which pile to search for a certain newspaper cutting and under which heap of clothes she had put the valuable Sorbian lace. Wasn’t the filigree pattern of that lace wonderful, where had such delicate lilies ever been seen as those growing vigorously in it?

In search of a woollen winter dress now to be Helene’s, a dress that Martha hadn’t worn for nearly ten years, Mother had been rummaging inside the highest mountain of clothes, which rose almost to the ceiling. She had soon disappeared entirely under it and finally crawled out with a different dress, one that was already too small for her younger daughter. In the course of her search the pile of clothes had been scattered far and wide, and now covered the bookshelves, two chairs and the beaten track through the room itself. It seemed to Helene as if the house must soon burst apart from the sheer volume of stuffing inside it. Mother bent down, picked up something here and something there, put those items aside to left and right of her, and thus worked her way to the corner of the room. There she came upon a round hatbox near the floor. She clasped the hatbox to her breast as if it were a prodigal son.

She had once brought back the hat she wore at her engagement party to her married home in this box, an unusually wide-brimmed hat with a veil and magpie feathers shimmering in shades of dark blue, almost black. Tenderly, she stroked the fine grey paper of the lid and caressed its almost pristine sides. But then she eyed the hatbox suspiciously, she turned it this way and that, she shook it and there was a clinking inside as if the engagement hat had turned into nails or coins. For a while, Mother tried undoing the violet satin ribbon wound several times round the box with shaking fingers, until she lost patience and her face twisted with anger. She flung the box at Martha’s feet with a cry of: You do it!

Martha picked up the hatbox, which now had a large dent in it. She looked around; she couldn’t see a place clear for her to put down this treasure. So she took the box to the kitchen and placed it on the table there. Helene and Mother followed her. Martha’s quick hands skilfully undid the knots.

Mother wanted to lift the lid herself. She sighed when she looked into the box. A sea of buttons and other sewing things came into view, flowers worked in lace, small scraps of fabric presumably kept for covering buttons still bare or in need of renovation.

Mother had to sit down on a chair and breathe deeply. As she did so her ribcage rose and fell as if she were fighting off rising excitement with all her might. She sobbed, tears ran down her cheeks and Helene wondered where, in her slender mother, such an apparently inexhaustible supply of tears could be stored.

Mother had gone to lie down late in the afternoon, and now the girls were sitting by her bed, Helene on the stool, Martha in the rocking chair. Helene was bending over the round box, busy fishing out hooks and eyes both large and small, gold and black, white and silver. She found a clump of moth cocoons in the tangle of tapes and braid. The empty shells of the larvae still stuck to the fabric. Helene looked round. Mother was propped against a tall pillow. She had laid one hand on the little chest with two drawers that held picture postcards and letters, as well as dried flowers and loose playing cards — you never knew, you might assemble a full pack some day, or a particular card might be needed for a pack that was incomplete without it. The lower drawer of the little chest contained mainly postage stamps and coupons from packs of coffee. Mother had closed her eyes after telling her daughters to keep quiet and do their work. She had been suffering from a violent headache for hours, and lines of pain were traced on her forehead between her eyes. Obviously Martha thought this was a good opportunity. The task she had been given must seem to her laborious and pointless: she was supposed to be disentangling the threads of cotton reels thrown carelessly into the needlework box and winding them up tidily again. Then she was to sort the reels by colour and type of thread.

As soon as Mother’s arm slipped heavily off the little chest in her sleep and her breath came regularly, Martha took out a slim, mustard-coloured book from under her apron and began reading it. She chuckled to herself, while her feet jiggled up and down as if she were about to start dancing or at least jump up any minute now. Helene looked longingly at Martha; she would have loved to know what made her so cheerful. Helene examined the tangled tapes in her hands. She spotted a white maggot on the dark-blue velvet of her dress, laboriously crawling in the direction of her knees, and felt nausea. And now another tiny maggot dropped out of what she had thought were the empty cocoons in her fingers, to land on her lap not far from the first. The maggot writhed, unsure which way to go. Hoping that Martha could rescue her, Helene whispered: Can I throw this away?

Leaf-green light shone through the drawn net curtains. From time to time a breath of wind made them billow out and tiny motes of dust danced in the narrow shaft of sunlight that shone briefly through the window. Martha rocked forward, stopped the rocking chair there for a few seconds, then rocked back. She turned a page and did not deign to give the tangled tapes in Helene’s hand so much as a glance. When she shook her head sternly, but still smiling, Helene wasn’t sure whether Martha had even heard her; perhaps she was lost entirely in her own world and her thoughts were with her book, or perhaps she was simply glad not to be holding this tangle of moth-eaten tapes and larvae herself. Helene retched. She cautiously put the tangle down on Mother’s bed. Assorted suspender belts, stockings and items of clothing that Mother had worn over the last few days were draped over the end of it.

Martha leaned back in the rocking chair and stretched her legs. With a delicate movement, she put the curl that had slipped out of her thick braid back behind her ear. Now and then she clicked her tongue, crossed one leg over the other and narrowed her eyes, licking her lips as if she particularly liked the flavour of whatever she had been reading. Only when Father came into the room with his dog did she start in surprise. Baldo had his tail between his legs and immediately lay down in front of the stove.

But Father did not notice his elder daughter’s red cheeks or the book that she hastily hid under her apron. He had eyes only for his wife. He didn’t know how he was going to say goodbye, and sighed as he walked up and down in his hussar’s uniform. Every time he turned, he looked at his wife as if asking her for help, turning to her for advice. It looked to Helene as if Father were about to say something, but he just breathed heavily, swallowed and finally sent the girls out of the room.

Later Helene knocked at the closed door; she wanted to say goodnight, and hoped for a glimpse of her father’s new sword and the sash of his uniform. As Helene saw it, the fear that Martha and her mother felt at the thought of Father going to join the army was entirely unfounded. With his imperial moustache, which he wore a little shorter than the Kaiser himself, more out of admiration and respect than because of any initial insidious doubts, with his rock-hard confidence and his love for the girls’ strange mother, Father seemed to her absolutely invulnerable. That impression was reinforced by the gleam and sparkle of the new curved sword. Even as Helene knocked, the door opened just a crack. Father was kneeling on the dark oak of the wooden floor that had been polished only a few days ago. It smelled of resin and onions. He was resting his forehead on Mother’s hand.

Goodnight, Helene whispered, and glanced at the sword that Father had put down casually on the rocking chair. When he did not reply, Helene supposed he was asleep. She tiptoed over to the rocking chair, ran her finger over the blade and was surprised to find how blunt it was, how cool. A faint click of the tongue startled her; she saw Father waving one hand, indicating that she was to go away so that he could be alone with Mother. He didn’t mind Helene’s feeling the blade of his sword, but he didn’t want her there. He had to say goodbye to his wife. Selma Würsich lay stretched out on the bed with her eyes closed; perhaps it was her high collar keeping her neck straight and the smell of onions luring tears from her closed eyes. Mother heard nothing, saw nothing, said nothing.

Helene retreated quietly to the door, walking backwards, and waited, hoping that Father would ask her some question, but he had laid his forehead on the back of Mother’s hand again and was repeating the words: my love, my little pigeon. Helene admired her father for his love. The war could never hurt anyone who loved her mother.

Next evening neither of the girls said goodnight to their father. They heard him pacing up and down in the room next door, and knew he was getting no advice or help. Sometimes he said something, it sounded like: Joy! and then again like: God! Only occasionally, between those words, did they hear his dog whining.

The girls lay snuggling close together. Helene pushed her nose between her big sister’s shoulder blades; from time to time she stuck out her chin and took a breath of air, while Martha turned the pages of her book regularly and laughed quietly to herself. But then, loud and clear, the girls heard their mother’s voice, deep and slightly husky from all her smoking: If you go I shall die.

Helene caressed the faint brown birthmark. Martha’s back was thin and delicate, and she stroked its freckles too, running her finger up and down along the fine lace edging of her sister’s nightdress.

Please, just one word — please.

No begging.

Please. Just one word.

Go on doing that first. Up there, yes, further up.

Helene followed her sister’s instructions and ran her hand over the skin, up the nightdress and Martha’s shoulders, circling there, then down her arm, over its bare skin, once again over her back under the linen nightdress, then down along Martha’s backbone, vertebra by vertebra, she could clearly feel every one of them under the fabric. Then she stopped.

One word.

Star.

Helene moved her hand very slightly, tracking the points of a star, stopped and demanded: More.

Though the star of my fate hath declined.

Helene rewarded Martha. She tickled the back of her neck. Line by line, stanza by stanza, Helene’s hands lured Byron’s words out of her sister’s mouth.

A horse and cart passed by under their window, and as the cart jolted over the cobblestones something jingled and clinked as if it were loaded with glasses. It must be carrying a delivery from the Three Ravens inn, which had moved into its new premises in Tuchmacherstrasse in the spring. The opening had enlivened their street a good deal. The drayman had cluttered up the pavement with his barrels, ladies of the middle class went to the Three Ravens in the middle of the day to drink coffee, while their cooks and housekeepers went shopping up in the Kornmarkt, and in the evening there were hussars bawling at the top of their voices in the street itself, which suddenly seemed too narrow and too small.

At weekends, the town south of the Kornmarkt was now all activity on a Saturday night. Men and women sang and stamped until the small hours to familiar tunes played on a piano. If the piano-player tired and his keyboard fell silent, someone else would bring out an accordion. People came from the little mountain villages at weekends, from Singwitz and Obergurig, even from Cunewalde and Löbau. They went to market in the morning, sold their ladders and ropes, their baskets and jugs, their onions and cabbages, and bought what wasn’t to be had at home, oranges and coffee, fine pipes and coarse tobacco. Then they danced the night away at the Three Ravens, before harnessing the horses to their carts early in the morning and climbing in, or some of them simply pushed handcarts back to their villages in the mountains. But Bautzen was a quiet place during the week.

Helene stroked her sister’s back, she ran the ball of her thumb down Martha’s backbone.

Harder, said Martha, with your nails.

Helene crooked her fingers so that her nails, which were short, could at least touch her sister’s skin. Perhaps she’d let her fingernails grow long for Martha’s sake, file them to points, the way she’d seen a girlfriend file hers.

Like that? Helene traced a star map on Martha’s shoulder blade, drawing lines from freckle to freckle, joining them up to make the constellations she knew. The first was Orion the hunter, wearing Martha’s birthmark on his breast like a shield; the central star of the three on his belt was slightly raised. Helene knew the moments when Martha would stretch, and when she would arch, luxuriating, go rigid and then double up. Cassiopeia merged directly with the Serpent in the star map, a snake with a large head. Ophiuchus the Serpent-Bearer rose in the middle of it. Helene knew that one from a book she had found on Father’s shelves. There were many days when Martha writhed under the touch of Helene’s hands, and if Helene listened carefully she thought Martha’s breathing sounded like a hiss. Helene imagined what it would be like to lift Martha up in the air, carry her, wondered how heavy she would be. Martha’s sighs were unpredictable, Helene teased them out; she thought she knew every nerve and fibre under her sister’s skin, stroked her as if she were playing an instrument that would make music only if the strings were touched in a particular way. In Helene’s eyes, Martha was already a grown woman. She seemed to her perfect. She had breasts with curving little buds, clear and tender and soft, and on some days of the month she secretly washed her little cloths. Only when she wanted to punish Helene for stealing raisins or saying something she didn’t like would Martha give her those little cloths to wash instead. Helene was afraid of Martha’s brusque instructions. She washed Martha’s blood out of the linen, took the little brown bottle of oil of turpentine, unscrewed the top and counted out thirty drops into the water for the final rinse. In winter she hung the little cloths up to dry in the attic, in front of the south-facing window. The turpentine evaporated, and the sun helped to make the cloths bright and white again. It would be years yet before Helene had to wring out any little cloths of her own; she was nine years younger than Martha and had started school only last summer.

Further down, said Martha, and Helene did as she was told, she stroked her sister’s sides further down, all the way to the place where her hips curved gently, then on back and round to the base of her spine.

Martha sighed deeply and there was a faint smacking noise as if she were opening her mouth to say something.

Over your kidneys, here, said Helene.

Yes, and up to my ribs, up to my lungs, dear heart.

Helene hadn’t heard Martha turn a page for several minutes now. Martha was lying on her side, her back turned to Helene, still and expectant. Helene’s hands came and went, she heightened Martha’s craving, she wanted to hear another sigh, just one, her hands flew softly over the skin now, no longer touching everything, only a few places, very few, desire made them breathe faster, first Helene, then Martha, and finally both of them; it sounded like the gasping noise you made wringing out laundry when you stood at the sink by yourself, hearing nothing but your own breathing and the gurgling of the laundry in the enamel basin of water, the effervescence of the washing powder, the foaming soda; here it was the gasping of two girls, no gurgling yet, only fast breathing, an effervescent bubbling, until Martha suddenly turned round.

My little angel. Martha took Helene’s hands, the hands that had just been stroking her, she spoke softly and clearly: I come off duty at four tomorrow and you must meet me outside the hospital. We’ll go down to the river. Martha’s eyes were shining, as they often did these days when she announced that they were going for a walk beside the Spree.

Helene tried to free her hands. It was hardly a question, more of a statement when she said: With Arthur.

Martha laid her forefinger on her sister’s lips. Don’t mind.

Helene shook her head, although she did mind. She opened her eyes very wide, she wasn’t going to cry. Even if she had wanted to cry, it wouldn’t be any use. Martha stroked Helene’s hair. Little angel, we’re going to meet him in the old vineyard on the other side of the railway line. When Martha was happy and excited, her laughter gurgled in her throat. He’s going to study botany in Heidelberg. He can live with his uncle there.

What about you?

I’m going to be his wife.

No.

The No came out of Helene’s mouth faster than she could think it, came bursting out. She added, quietly: No, that’s impossible.

Impossible? Anything’s possible, my angel, the world is all before us. Martha was radiant, joyful, but Helene squeezed her eyes shut and obstinately shook her head.

Father won’t let you.

Father won’t let any man come near me. Martha released Helene’s hands and, in spite of her remark, she had to laugh. He loves me.

Father or Arthur?

Arthur, of course. Father just owns me. He can’t give me up. Even if he wanted to, he simply can’t do it. He won’t let anyone have me.

Well, not Arthur, that’s for sure.

Martha turned on her back and clasped her hands as if about to pray. God, what can he do about it? I have two legs, I can walk away. And a hand to give Arthur. Why are you so stern, Helene, why are you so anxious? I know what you’re thinking.

What am I thinking?

You think it’s because of Arthur’s family, you think Father has reservations of a certain kind. But that’s not true. Why would he mind? They don’t even go to synagogue. Sometimes Father says bad things about those people, but haven’t you noticed his smile? He’s making fun of them in a friendly way, like when I call you a grubby sparrow, little angel. He’d never have married Mother if he thought the same way as he talks.

He loves Mother.

Has he told you how they met? Helene shook her head and Martha went on. How he travelled to Breslau and met Fräulein Steinitz with her striking hats in the printing works there? She was stylish, he says, a stylish young lady in a sea-green coat, the colour the printers call cyan. She still has it. And she wore a different hat every day.

Stylish, murmured Helene to herself. The word sounded like a chocolate; it was meant to describe something high-class, but chocolates just tasted bitter.

Her uncle was a hat maker and she was his favourite model. She won’t throw out any of those felt confections that look so odd today. I once heard Father telling her angrily she’d been in love with her uncle, that was why she couldn’t part with those old hats. Mother only laughed, she laughed so much that I thought Father’s suspicions must be right. Do you think he minded her being Jewish?

Helene looked at Martha incredulously and narrowed her eyes. But she isn’t. Helene shook her head to reinforce what she said. I mean, not really.

You just don’t notice because she doesn’t wear a wig. And what synagogue would she go to? She doesn’t keep separate sets of dishes, she leaves the cooking to Mariechen. But of course she’s Jewish. You think they call her the foreign woman here in Bautzen because she speaks with a Breslau accent. Do you? Do you really believe it’s a Breslau accent? I don’t, it’s the way her whole family talk. She uses all those words that seem to you familiar, and you have no idea that they show what she is.

Martha, what are you talking about? Helene kept shaking her head slowly and firmly, as if that would silence Martha.

It’s true. She doesn’t have to pretend to us. Why do you think she never goes to church? She gives the cathedral a very wide berth.

It’s because of the meat market, that’s why. She says the butchers’ stalls smell horrible. Helene wished Martha would keep quiet.

But there was no stopping Martha now. When we go to Mass at Christmas with Father and Grandmother, she says someone has to stay at home and cook the meal. What a fib! Why does she have to cook the meal at Christmas, of all times? Because she wants to give Mariechen time off, because she has such a kind heart? No, it’s because she has no business in church with our God at Christmas, that’s all, little angel. Did you never notice before?

Helene leaned her head on her hand the way she saw Martha do it. Have you talked to her about that?

Of course. She says it’s none of my business. I tell her if I want to get married she won’t be found in any church register, and I don’t have her family records so half of my own are missing. Guess what she said? She told me not to be impertinent, she said if I went on like that no one would ever want to marry me.

Helene looked at Martha and knew that Mother was lying. Martha was at least as beautiful as Mother, with the same attractive, narrow nose, the same freckled white skin, the same curving hips. Who’d bother about some kind of old family records?

Martha said it was no good Mariechen teaching them the stitches to embroider their initials on linen for a trousseau. Never mind their initials, their origin tainted them.

Mariechen was considered a wonderful needlewoman and lacemaker, even among her own Sorbian relations. But although women often knocked at the door in Tuchmacherstrasse wanting to order lace handkerchiefs and caps and tablecloths from her, she turned them all down. She was in a steady job, she replied with the smile of a faithful servant. Only very occasionally did she give something as a present to a sister, cousin or niece. Most of the lace and little mats that Mariechen crocheted and embroidered in her spare time stayed in the house. Her absolute loyalty created a strange bond between Sorbian Marja and her mistress, Frau Selma Würsich. Perhaps they simply shared a love of fine fabrics?

Helene looked at Martha. She could see no flaw. Martha appeared to her perfect. Arthur’s glances were by no means the only ones that lingered on her fine features. When Helene crossed the Kornmarkt with Martha, it wasn’t just the young men who looked at her, whistling cheerfully, and wished them good day. Old men too made sounds like grunts and groans. Martha’s steps were light, her strides were long, she stood proud and erect, so that people showed respect when they met her, or that was how Helene saw it. The men clicked their tongues and smacked their lips as if tasting sweet syrup on their tongues. Even the market women addressed Martha as pretty young lady and my beauty. More and more men who would have liked to marry her were to be found every day near the little printing works in Tuchmacherstrasse. If Martha stood behind the counter in the small shop area helping to serve customers, several young men would gather there during the afternoon, getting her to show them different kinds of paper and different typefaces, seldom able to make up their minds. They weighed up the pros and cons, got talking to each other, they boasted of their own businesses or studies with unconcealed glances in Martha’s direction and courted her as best they could. Only when one of them ventured to ask her out for coffee, and she declined with a smile, saying she never went out for coffee with customers, did the point where he decided to order a small print run come closer. But the young men came back another day, they kept watch on each other; every single one of them wanted to make sure that no one else was higher than he was in Martha’s favour. Helene could understand how those men felt, for she herself would have loved to sleep beside beautiful Martha and wake up at her side all her life. Marriage to a man seemed to Helene totally pointless and unnecessary. Marriage was the last thing anyone needed.

So why do you think Father wouldn’t let you marry someone like Arthur Cohen?

Why? Martha put her head back on the pillow, looking annoyed rather than thoughtful, and when she brought out a handkerchief from under the pillow and blew her nose very thoroughly, as Mother did after a long fit of tears, Helene was sorry she’d asked. But then, unexpectedly, Martha’s smile spread over her face, a smile that she could hardly keep back these days, a smile that easily turned to a chuckle and — only if neither Mother nor Father was around — occasionally to wholehearted, exuberant laughter.

Little angel, who’d there be for him to rely on then? Mother? If Mother goes to a fair she isn’t seen for days. Very likely she stays at inns in Zwickau and Pirna dancing with strange men until morning!

Never. Helene couldn’t help smiling, because she didn’t know whether Martha expressed such a supposition just to anger her or whether there was a grain of truth in it.

And who would look after you? Father can’t get on his horse and go off to the war without knowing we’re provided for. He’s afraid, that’s all it is. And he wants me to look after you. I will, too. You wait and see.

Helene didn’t reply. She guessed that every word she said would only make Martha think harder and in more detail than ever about possible escape routes. She was sure that for weeks Martha had thought of nothing but how to begin a new life with Arthur Cohen.

Who’s that book you’re reading by?

It’s not your sort of book.

But I want to know.

You want to know everything. Martha wrinkled her nose; she liked Helene’s curiosity and she liked still being so far ahead of her sister. A year ago, when Helene was finally old enough to start at the Municipal School for Girls on Lauengraben, she could already read and write. She had learned to play the old piano from Martha, who watched with admiration and a little envy to see how smoothly her hands slipped over the keys without practising, how fast her runs were even in the lower octaves, how surely she remembered the melodies that Martha often had to learn laboriously, note by note. And numbers raced around in Helene’s head even faster and more confidently than her fingers moved over the piano keyboard; no matter what numbers Martha threw out for her, Helene had no trouble in making other numbers out of them, taking them apart, dividing them, fitting them together into something new. After only a few weeks the teacher moved Helene up to do lessons with the older girls, giving her exercises for ten-year-olds. Helene was seven at the time. It began to look as if the teacher would have passed on all she knew to the little girl within a few months, before she was supposed to be the right age for it. Helene was ashamed of herself for not growing up fast enough. She was frightened, too. At fourteen, sixteen at the latest, girls left school and went home to their parents, to take over the running of the household and be introduced to men who were believed to be well off and to enjoy a good reputation, one to which a young wife would add. Only a few girls were allowed to go on to the High School, and the other girls in the town knew very well who they were and envied them. If one of Martha’s friends said she would like to be a nursery schoolteacher, her parents asked in disparaging tones whether that kind of thing was really necessary. The family had enough money, they said, the girl was well enough educated, she could already choose between two suitors and have a good, well-to-do husband. Martha’s tales of her girlfriends sounded to Helene like a horror story. She would pause for effect as she described how one particular friend, for instance, wanted to marry for love and had told her parents so. The parents just laughed. In a tone of wise superiority, the girl’s father pointed out that the right man had to present himself first, and love could follow. Meanwhile Judge Fiebinger, whose sons were not to begin their studies until they had done military service in the local regiment, was sending his daughters straight to Dresden, one to the conservatory, the other to the women’s teacher-training college. Martha often told Helene about the judge’s daughters. It was a good thing to be a teacher. A few years ago, Martha used to sit beside that budding teacher the judge’s daughter in school and help her with her sums. Perhaps the girl would never have made it to the High School without her help? Martha whispered in Helene’s ear that if she herself went on like this, Father would send her to study too, to Dresden and Heidelberg, she was sure he would. Her whispering lips touched Helene’s ear, they tickled pleasantly and Helene couldn’t get enough of it. Their father had allowed Martha to train as a nurse, so surely in view of Helene’s clever mind he would consider his younger daughter his pride and joy, he’d send her to Heidelberg where she could be one of the few women to study medicine. When Martha painted such a picture of her future, Helene held her breath, hoping Martha wouldn’t stop telling that story, would go on and on, and picture Helene studying human anatomy some day in a huge lecture room at Dresden University, enumerating the funny names of parts of the body, like spinal cord and vertebral canal. Helene drank in such words when Martha came home with them and repeated them to her sister once or twice, only to forget them soon herself. Helene wanted to know more about the rhomboid fossa and the arteries at the base of the skull, but Martha stumbled over her words, as if she had been caught out. At a loss, she looked at Helene and confessed that the names were all she knew, not where those things were and what they were for. She stroked her little angel’s head and comforted Helene, not very long now and she’d be studying the subject herself, only a few more years, she’d soon see. As soon as Martha’s narrative flow stalled — perhaps she had dropped happily off to sleep beside her sister — less attractive ideas occurred to Helene. She remembered that although Father had recently got her to help with the bookkeeping for the printing works, he just muttered quietly, talking crossly to himself, if she found a mistake in the accounts somewhere. He didn’t want to acknowledge that his younger daughter was clever. All the time Helene sat in her father’s office in the evening doing arithmetic, he never once showed any surprise or pleasure. She drew up whole columns of figures just to get him to stop and marvel at them for a change, to notice that she was soon dealing with his accounts more easily than he did himself. But Father ignored Helene’s efforts. When the teacher asked her parents to visit the school building on Lauengraben and talked to her father, telling him that in the course of the school year Helene had studied all the material supposed to occupy the first four years in many subjects, he smiled in a kindly way, shrugged almost imperceptibly, as was his habit, and looked lovingly at his wife, who was ceremoniously taking a needle she had brought out of the lapel of her coat, who then produced the darning thread she had put in her pocket at home and, in mid-conversation and despite the teacher’s presence, set about darning a hole in her dress with the red yarn. While Helene’s parents were relieved to find that their daughter had not stolen anything and had not been naughty in any other way, they did not understand why the teacher had asked them to come to the school to tell them that she would soon be unable to teach their daughter anything else. She was simply planning to let her read rhymes and fairy tales, if her parents had no objection, she said. Helene’s mother bit through the thread with her teeth; the hole was mended. The dog impatiently slapped his master’s leg with his long tail. The teacher’s enquiring look made Helene’s father uneasy. It was not for him, after all, to tell the teacher what she was to do with his daughter.

When they came home they didn’t say a word to Helene about their visit to the teacher. It was as if their younger daughter were an embarrassment.

Helene wanted to stay on at school, but she entertained doubts, both niggling and more serious, of the dream that Martha had spun for her. Neither of her parents had ever said a word about Heidelberg or studying. Helene did not want to be sent home ahead of time to keep house for her mother and be set to work clearing cupboards of the debris left by moths.

Martha sometimes asked Helene: What do you want to be when you grow up?

But she knew the answer; it was always the same. I want to be a nurse like you. Helene pressed her nose against Martha’s shoulder and breathed in her sister’s scent. Martha smelled like a warm roll and only very slightly of the vinegar that she rubbed into her hands when she came off duty. Helene observed Martha’s smile. Was she glad of Helene’s ever-reliable answer? Did it flatter her to think that the little girl wanted to be just like her? Next moment, however, Helene realized that Martha’s smile had nothing to do with her answer. Martha was stroking the gold-embossed lettering on the cover of her book.

What a lovely present.

Let me see.

Close your eyes, yes, that’s right. You can read it blind.

Helene felt Martha taking her hand, but did not guide it to the book. Instead, she found that she was feeling Martha’s stomach and her navel. Martha’s navel was set in a little hollow, unlike Helene’s, which stood out like a button. Helene squeezed both eyes tight shut and felt Martha taking her finger and pushing it into the pit of the navel.

There, what can you decipher?

Martha felt the slight curve of Martha’s belly. How soft her sister’s skin was. Unlike their mother’s belly, which spread out, particularly below the navel, Martha had a beautiful stomach with only the gentlest swelling. Helene felt Martha’s ribs and thought of the gold letters on the mustard-coloured book. She had deciphered them in secret long ago. Byron, said the letters. So she said: Byron.

Byron. Martha corrected Helene’s pronunciation. Keep your eyes closed and go on reading.

Helene could tell from her sister’s voice that Martha was pleased with her ability to read blind. Go on reading, Martha told her for the second time. And Helene felt Martha taking her hand and guiding it over her belly, circling, running Helene’s hand over her hips, stroking them. Read.

A Selection of Lyrical Poetry.

Helene had noticed the gold letters and had been wondering for some time what exactly lyrical poetry was. But then Martha took her hand again and placed it on her bottom rib.

Can you see under my skin too, little angel? Do you know what’s underneath the ribs here? The liver lies here.

Sisterly knowledge. Remember that, you’ll have to learn it all later. And this is where the gall bladder is, right beside it, yes, there. The word spleen was on Helene’s lips, but she didn’t want to say it, she just wanted to open her eyes, but Martha noticed and told her: Keep your eyes closed.

Helene felt Martha take her hand and guide it up to the next rib, and finally still higher, up to her breast.

Although she kept her eyes tightly closed and couldn’t see, Helene noticed her own feelings and how hot her face was all of a sudden. Martha was still guiding her hand, and Helene clearly felt her nipple and the firm, soft, perfect curve of the breast. Then down into the valley below, where she felt a bone.

A little rib.

Martha didn’t answer, and now her hand was climbing the other hill. Helene peered through her lashes, but Martha’s eyes weren’t on her any more, they were wandering aimlessly, blissfully, under her own half-closed lids, and Helene saw Martha’s lips opening slightly and moving.

Come here.

Martha’s voice was husky; with her other hand she drew Helene’s head towards her and pressed her own mouth on Helene’s. Helene was startled; she felt Martha’s tongue on her lips, demanding, she could never have imagined how rough and smooth at the same time Martha’s tongue on her lips would feel. It tickled, it almost made Helene laugh, but Martha’s tongue grew firm and pressed on Helene’s lips as if searching for something. That tongue opened Helene’s lips and pushed against her teeth. Helene had to breathe, she wanted air, she opened her lips, and now Martha’s tongue was filling her whole mouth. Helene felt her sister’s tongue moving about in it, back and forth, pushing at the insides of her cheeks, pressing against her own tongue. Helene thought of their last walk beside the Spree, and how Martha had told her to stay a few steps behind her and Arthur. Suddenly she noticed that her hand was lying on Martha’s breast all by itself, while for some time Martha’s hands had been moving in her hair and on her back.

They had walked to the causeway lying concealed beyond the vineyard; you could reach it only by passing the willows that grew there. The ground was black and slippery. Come on, called Martha, several metres away, and she ran ahead with Arthur. They jumped from tree stump to tree stump, the soft ground yielded, their bare feet sank into it. Little puddles of gurgling water stood everywhere. Swarms of tiny midges were swirling in the air. Here, at this bend of the river, the Spree had made itself a small bay where the ground underfoot was not firm, land on which few people out for a stroll would ever tread. Marsh marigolds were flowering wherever you looked. The daisy chain that Martha had made Helene on the meadow by the river bank threatened to slip off her head; she held it on with one hand, using the other to carry her shoes and hold up her dress to keep it from getting muddy. It was difficult to see where the ground was at all firm, it kept giving way and, fast as they ran, putting their toes down first, their feet were soon black up to the ankle. The sword-shaped leaves of water lilies had a silvery sheen in the sunlight.

Arthur had put on his bathing costume behind a willow tree and was first into the water; he had flung himself into the current and was flailing about frantically with his arms to keep from being carried downstream. He looked as if he were treading water. The wind blew through the reeds, they swayed and bent down to the surface. Next moment the wind blew everything the other way, the yellowish-green twigs, the curving blades of grass as they bowed down. The rushing sound broke against Helene’s ears. Although Arthur kept calling to them, Martha couldn’t make up her mind to follow him. She didn’t have a bathing costume, she had grown so fast last year that her old one didn’t fit any more.

Let’s leave our petticoats on and just paddle in the water.

Martha and Helene took off their dresses and hung them over the branch of a low-growing willow. The water was icy cold, the chill went right through their calves. When Arthur came close to the bank and made as if to splash them with water, the girls fled. Martha squealed and laughed, and kept calling Helene’s name. Arthur wanted to lie on the grass with Martha at the foot of the slope further downstream, but Martha took Helene’s hand and said she couldn’t go anywhere without her little sister. And there might be grass stains if they lay down in their petticoats. Arthur said she could sit on his jacket, but Martha declined. She pointed to her mouth and showed Arthur how her teeth were chattering.

I’ll warm you up. Arthur put his hands on Martha’s arms, he wanted to stroke them and rub them, but now Martha made her teeth chatter as loudly as she could.

Arthur brought Martha her dress, told her to put it on again and Martha thanked him.

Later the two sisters sat snuggling together on the slope, side by side. A little way further up, Arthur had found some small wild strawberries, and now he was crawling around the meadow on all fours. From time to time he came back to the girls, knelt down in front of Martha and offered her a handful of berries on a vine leaf.

No sooner had he left again than Martha took the berries and put them alternately in Helene’s mouth and her own. They fell on the grass and looked up at the clouds. The wind had died down around them and now carried only a faint scent of wood from the sawmill. Helene breathed in the aroma, mingled with the sweet perfume of some kind of flowers. Martha saw the shape of a hussar in the sky; his horse had only forelegs and even those disappeared if you watched for any length of time. While there seemed to be almost no wind down here, the clouds up above were driving eastwards faster and faster. Helene said she could see a dragon, but Martha said dragons have wings.

No wonder everyone’s talking about mobilization, Arthur called down to them. Seeing you two lying there like that, I don’t feel as if picking berries were difficult!

The sisters exchanged meaningful glances. Arthur’s main interest was in being close to them, they were sure, not in mobilization. Neither of them had any idea, in fact, what he meant by that word. They suspected that his notion of the term was as vague as their own. They heard the wind whistling fitfully up above, whistling a cheerful march. Who was going to war, and what for? Was there a more beautiful place anywhere than the banks of the Spree? And for months the warmth of the sun had inspired such confidence! The holidays would never end; no one would follow the call to mobilization.

That’s all there are, said Arthur when he came back some time later with two handfuls of wild strawberries and sat down in front of the sisters. Would you like them? He reached out his hands to Martha; the berries were rolling about and threatened to fall into the grass.

No, I don’t want any more.

Would you like some?

Helene shook her head. For a moment Arthur looked at his hands, undecided.

Darling, he begged Martha, laughing. They’re for you.

Never mind that, let’s feed the little angel.

Martha held up her hands and took the strawberries from Arthur. Some of them fell on the grass.

Grab her. Martha indicated Helene with a nod of her head. Arthur did as she said, flung himself on Helene, forced her down under him and knelt on her small body, his strong hands pressing her arms to the ground. While Arthur and Martha laughed, Helene struggled, clenched her fists, shouted to Arthur to let her go. She tried arching her spine to throw him off, but he was heavy, he laughed, he was so heavy that her back gave way under the strain. Now Martha forced berry after berry between Helene’s lips as she pressed them together as firmly as possible. Juice was running out of the corners of her mouth and down her chin and throat. Jaws clenched, Helene tried begging them to leave her alone. Now Martha stuffed the little berries up Helene’s nose so that she could hardly breathe and the juice stung the inside of her nostrils. Martha squashed the berries on Helene’s mouth, on her teeth, squeezed them so that the skin around Helene’s mouth was itching from the sweet juice of the berries, until she opened her mouth and not only did she lick the strawberries off her teeth, she licked Martha’s fingers too when her sister pushed them into her mouth.

That tickles. Martha laughed. It feels like, like… feel for yourself.

Helene could already feel Arthur’s fingers in her mouth. She didn’t stop to think, she simply bit. Arthur screeched and jumped up.

He had run some way off.

Are you crazy? Martha had looked at Helene in horror. It was only a bit of fun.

And now, feeling Martha’s tongue in her mouth, Helene wondered whether to bite that too. But she couldn’t, there was something she liked about Martha’s tongue, although at the same time she felt ashamed.

Martha shook her awake. It was still dark and Martha was holding a candle. Apparently the girls were to follow their father into the next room. Mother lay there on the bed, rigid. Her eyes were dull, with no light in them. Helene tried to see a gleam of some kind there, she propped her hands on the bed and bent over her mother, but Mother’s eyes never moved.

I’m dying, said Mother quietly.

Father said nothing; he looked grave. He was nervously fingering the pommel of his curved sword. He didn’t want to waste any more time talking about the point of the war and his part in it. He had been expected at the barracks on the outskirts of town since last week and the regiment wouldn’t put up with further delay. His departure could not be postponed or evaded. It was no surprise to Ernst Ludwig Würsich to hear that his wife would rather die than say goodbye. She had frequently toyed with the idea before, had said so, in tones both loud and soft, to herself and to others. Every child she had lost after the birth of Martha had seemed to her a demand for her life to end. The pendulum of the clock on the wall shattered time into small, countable units.

Carefully, Helene approached Mother’s hand. She was going to kiss it. The hand moved and was withdrawn. Helene leaned over her mother’s face. But Mother moved her head aside without giving her daughter one of her usual strange looks. Her four dead children would have been boys. One by one they had died, two still in the uterus, the other two just after birth. They had all had black hair when they were born, thick, long black hair, and dark skin that was almost blue. The fourth son had been breathing noisily on the morning of his birth, breathing with difficulty, he seemed to take a deep breath and then all was still. As if the breath couldn’t leave his little body any more. Yet he was smiling, and newborn babies don’t usually smile. His mother had called the dead child Ernst Josef; she had taken the baby’s body in her arms and wouldn’t let him go for days. He lay in her arms, in bed with her, and when she had to visit the smallest room in the house she took him with her. Later, Mariechen had told Martha and Helene how their father had asked her to make sure that everything was all right, and how she had gone into the bedroom where Mother sat on the edge of the bed with her hair down, cradling her dead baby. Only after days was she heard praying; it was a relief. Mother had recited a long Kaddish for Ernst Josef, although there was no one to say amen, no one to join her in mourning. Father and Mariechen were worried about her, and neither of them wept for the dead child. Whenever anyone spoke to Mother over the next few days, said something to her or asked a question, her voice rose, murmuring words as if she were constantly talking to herself, and the murmuring died down quietly to inaudibility only in the hours when no one spoke to her. Even now she was heard praying every day. The strange sounds coming out of Mother’s mouth sounded like an invented language. Helene couldn’t imagine that Mother knew what she was saying. There was something both all-inclusive and exclusive about them; to Helene’s ear they had no meaning at all, yet they screened the house from the world, rested on it like a silence full of sound.

When Mariechen opened the curtains in the morning Mother closed them again. After that there were only one or two months in the year when Mother woke from her darkness, and then she remembered that she had a living child, a little girl called Martha, and she was ready to play with her in silly ways as if she were a child herself. It was Easter, so Mother thought she would roll eggs down the Protschenberg. She seemed to be in high spirits, she was wearing one of her feather-trimmed hats. She threw it up in the air like a discus and let herself drop in the grass, she rolled over the meadow and downhill, and lay there at the bottom of the slope. Martha ran after her. Ladies and gentlemen with sunshades watched from a safe distance; no longer surprised by the foreign woman’s behaviour, they shook their heads disapprovingly and turned away. Their eggs must seem to them more important than the woman who had just rolled down the hill. Martha’s father had followed his wife and daughter; he bent over his wife and offered her a hand to help her up. Martha, then eight years old, held her mother’s other hand. Mother uttered a throaty laugh, she said she liked his God better than hers, but both of them were just the same, merely the shared imaginary creation of a few deluded people, human worms who for hundreds and thousands of years had spent a large part of their lives brooding over some plausible reason for their existence. A strange, a ridiculous characteristic of living beings.

Ernst Ludwig Würsich took his wife home to calm her down.

Martha was entrusted to the maidservant’s care, and the husband sat beside his wife’s bed. He never expected her to show him respect, he said gently, he would ask her to keep quiet only to show respect for God. He stroked his wife’s brow. Sweat was running down her temples. Was she hot, her husband asked, and he helped his wife to take off her dress. He carefully stroked her shoulders and arms. He kissed the rivulet at her temple. God was just and merciful, he told her. Next moment he knew he had said the wrong thing, for his wife shook her head and whispered: Ernst Josef… Only when he closed her mouth with a kiss a few seconds later, and tried to soothe her, did she complete her sentence in a whisper:… was one of four. How can you call a God who has taken four sons from me just and merciful?

Tears flowed. Her husband kissed her face, he kissed her tears, he drank her unhappiness and lay down in bed beside her.

In the evening she told her husband: That was the last time, I don’t want to lose any more sons. She didn’t have to ask if he understood her, for whether he liked it or not, he surely did.

Almost ten months later a baby was born. Big and heavy, fair-skinned with a rosy glow, a bald head with huge eyes which within a few weeks were a radiant blue that alarmed its mother. The baby was a girl, her mother could not recognize her as her own. And when her father wanted to take his daughter to the pastor, it was Mariechen who chose the child’s name: Helene.

Helene’s mother paid her no attention, she wouldn’t pick up the baby and could not hold her close. The baby cried as time went on, she grew thin, couldn’t digest the goat’s milk she was given and spat out more of it than she drank. Mariechen put the baby to her own breast to soothe her, but her breast was old and had never smelled of milk, it could give no nourishment, so the baby screamed. A wet-nurse was found to breastfeed Helene. The baby sucked the milk, she grew plump and heavy again. Her eyes seemed brighter every day and her first hair came in, a pale gold down. Her mother lay motionless in bed, turning away her face when anyone brought her the baby. When she spoke of the child she did not say her name, she could not even say my daughter. She called her just the child.

Helene knew about these early years of hers. She had heard Mariechen talking to Martha about them. Her mother would not hear of any god. She had made one room in the house hers, a room for herself alone, and she slept there in a narrow bed under the feather dusters and spoke of them escorting souls. When Helene lay in Martha’s bed in the evening, counting freckles and pressing her nose to Martha’s back, she increasingly found herself adopting, without meaning to, the viewpoint that she supposed was really reserved for a god. She imagined all the little two-legged creatures scrabbling over the globe of earth, devising images of him, thinking up names for him, telling creation stories. The thought of them as ridiculous earthworms, as Mother called them, seemed to her reasonable in one way; in another she felt sorry for them, creatures who, in their own fashion, were doing only as the ants and the lemmings and the penguins did. They set up hierarchies and structures suitable to their species with its thoughts and doubts, both of those part of the system, since a human being free of doubts was unimaginable. She knew how touchily Father reacted to these ideas. And he was especially silent and serious when Mother said, laughing, that she had spent a night with all souls, or he might call it god, and now that she was carrying a son below her heart she felt blessed, so she would soon be going away with the souls, her flesh would be going with them for ever. Helene heard Father’s friend Mayor Koban trying to persuade him to put Mother in an asylum. But Father wouldn’t hear of it. He loved his wife. The idea of an asylum hurt him more than her withdrawal from the world. It did not disturb him that she spent many months a year in the darkened rooms of the house, never setting foot out in Tuchmacherstrasse.

Even when the footpaths through the house grew narrow because his wife kept dragging things indoors during her few wakeful months, collecting them, adding them to various piles over which she spread lengths of cloth in different colours, Father preferred this kind of life with his wife to the prospect of living without her.

While he had once protested against the collecting and gathering, occasionally telling her that she ought to throw some object out, whereupon she would explain to him at great length the possible use of that object — perhaps a particularly battered crown cork which she expected to metamorphose in some way if she kept her eye on it — over the last few years he asked his wife what use something could possibly be only when he felt like listening to a declaration of love. Her declarations of love for what generally seemed to be worthless, superfluous objects were the most exciting stories that Ernst Ludwig Würsich had ever heard.

One day Helene was sitting in the kitchen, helping Mariechen to bottle gooseberries.

Where’s that orange peel I hung up in the storeroom to dry?

I’m sorry, madam, the housekeeper made haste to say. It’s still up there in a cigar box. We needed the space for the elderflowers.

Elderflower tea! Mother scornfully distended her nostrils. It smells of cat pee, Mariechen, how often have I told you so? Pick mint by all means, dry yarrow, but never mind about the elderflowers.

My little pigeon, Father interrupted, what were you going to do with the orange peel? It’s dried already.

Yes, like leather, don’t you think? Mother’s voice was velvety, she waxed lyrical. Orange peel cut from the fruit in a spiral strip and hung up to dry. Isn’t the smell of it in the storeroom lovely? And you should see the spirals twist and turn when you hang them over the stove by a thread — oh, so beautiful. Wait, I’ll show you. And Mother was already racing up to the storeroom like a young girl, looking for the cigar box, carefully taking out the strips of orange peel. Like skin, don’t you agree? She took his hand so that he could feel it, she wanted him to stroke it the way she did, to feel what she was feeling, so that he’d know what she was talking about. The skin of a young tortoise.

Helene noticed how lovingly her father looked at his wife, his eyes followed the way her fingers stroked the dried strips of orange peel, raised them to her nose, lowered her eyelids to distend her nostrils and smell the peel, and obviously he wasn’t going to tell her that this wasn’t the time of year to heat the stove. She would keep the orange peel strips in the cigar box until next winter, and the winter after next, for ever, no one must throw anything away, and Helene’s father knew why. Helene loved her father for his questions and his silences at just the right moment; she loved him when he looked at her mother as he was looking at her now. In silence he was surely thanking God for such a wife.

Just under two years after the war had ended, Ernst Ludwig Würsich finally managed to set off for home, accompanied by a male nurse from Dresden who was also on his way back. It was a difficult journey. He spent most of it sitting in a cart pulled along by the male nurse, who swore at him for various reasons depending on the time of day: in the morning because he kept apologizing for giving the man such discomfort, at noon because he wanted to go much too far in a day and in the evening because in spite of his missing leg he still weighed several kilos too much.

To his disappointment, and because he had not reported to the barracks until some weeks after the beginning of the war, he had not been accepted into the 3rd Saxon Hussars, a regiment set up four years earlier. How could he tell anyone that his wife said she was dying, and without her in his life he might well not feel any inclination to be a hero? But even worse, certainly — and perhaps it was why he couldn’t talk to anyone about his wife’s threat of her imminent death — this was by no means the first time she had felt impelled to make it. Although he had lived with her words ringing in his ears for several years, and although she gave a different reason every time, he could not accustom himself to that most extreme threat. He was also aware how little such a reason could affect a garrison, how little it could ever be a valid reason for defying orders from a state requiring unconditional obedience. The threat of his Selma’s death appeared plain ridiculous and insignificant in the face of a German Reich for which he was in duty bound to risk his life.

On his arrival at the Old Barracks on the outskirts of town, he was immediately stripped of the hussar’s uniform and curved sword he had acquired only a few months earlier, and was told that another man had ridden his horse to France, where he had already died a hero’s death. The artillery had also left, so he was to report to the new infantry barracks. On all these journeys he was accompanied by his dog, old Baldo. He had told him to go away, but Baldo was having none of that; he simply would not leave his master. God with us! Ernst Ludwig Würsich had shouted at Baldo, gesturing to him with outstretched arm to go away. Perhaps it wasn’t so hard to understand that a dog called after Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg could not part with his master on hearing him utter the Chancellor’s own slogan. Baldo lowered his head and wagged his tail hard. The dog followed him so persistently from barracks gate to barracks gate that tears came to Ernst Ludwig Würsich’s eyes and he had to threaten to strike Baldo with his bare hand to make him go home, where no one expected him. At the infantry barracks they handed Citizen Würsich, until recently a hussar, a private soldier’s uniform that had obviously seen action already, then they pondered for some weeks which way to send him. In mid-January he set off for Masuria. He could hardly move for the driving snow. While the men in front of him, behind him and beside him spoke of revenge and striking back, he longed to be at home under the warm goose feather quilt in his own bed in Tuchmacherstrasse in Bautzen. Not long afterwards the army he had been sent to join did indeed fight a battle among frosty fields and frozen lakes, but before Ernst Ludwig Würsich could even use his gun in a copse of oak trees — the saplings were still young and not very tall — he lost his left leg to his immediate neighbour’s hand grenade, which went off at the wrong time as the troop attacked. Two comrades carried him over the ice of Lake Löwentin and in February took him to a field hospital at Lötzen, where he was to lie forgotten and thus unable to return home for the rest of the war.

As soon as the pain brought him back to consciousness on his sickbed, he asked someone to look for his talisman: the stone that his wife had pressed into his hand on one of the days of their long-drawn-out farewell. At first she probably hoped that the talisman would change his mind and get him to stay, but later, when he was polishing his sword, she had told him to think of it as something to keep him safe. It was sewn into the inside pocket of his uniform and was shaped like a heart. His wife, claiming to have recognized it as a linden leaf, ascribed curative powers to it and told him to lay it on any wound to heal it. The wound below his torso seemed to him too large for that, and for the first few weeks after his injury he shrank from looking down at it at all, let alone touching the sore flesh in any way, so he placed the stone on his eye socket. It felt heavy and pleasantly cooling there.

While the stone lay on his eye socket, Ernst Ludwig Würsich murmured words of comfort to himself, words reminding him of what his wife had said, good words — oh, my dear, she had called him — encouraging words saying that it would be all right again. Later he took the stone in his hand and held it tight, and he felt as if not only his pain, that keen and now familiar companion which kept appearing, white and shining, to deprive him of sight and hearing, but also the last of his strength were being pressed out into the stone, breathing life into it. At least just a little, so little and yet so much that the stone soon felt to him hotter than his hand. Only when it had been lying on the sheet beside him for some time could he use it to cool his eye socket again. So he spent days occupied with this simplest of actions. Those days appeared to him at first anything but dull, for the pain kept him awake, kept his wound alive, nagged until he would have liked to run away from it on both legs, and he knew just where he would go. Never before had he thought so passionately of his wife, never before had his love seemed so clear and pure to him, manifest as it was without any kind of distraction, without the faintest doubt, as in these days when all he did was to pick up her stone and put it down again.

But the pain went on and on, exhausting his nerves, and fine cracks appeared in his clarity of mind of those first few days; his insight into his pure love crumbled and collapsed. One night the pain woke him and he could turn neither to left nor to right, the pain was not white and shining any more but fluid, black, lightless lava, and he heard the whimpering and whining under the other sheets on the beds close to him. He felt as if all his love, all his understanding of his existence, had been merely a courageous but vain rebellion against the pain. Nothing seemed pure and clear any more; there was only pain. He didn’t want to groan, but there was no time or space for what he wanted now. The auxiliary nurse was tending another wounded man who wouldn’t last much longer, he was sure of that, the man’s wailing at the far end of the hut must stop soon, before his own. He longed for peace. He cried out, he wanted to blame someone, he had no memory of God or faith in him. He begged. The auxiliary nurse came, gave him an injection, and the injection had no effect whatsoever. Only after dawn did he manage to sleep. At midday he asked for a sheet of paper and a pencil. His arm felt heavy, there seemed to be no strength in his hand, he could hardly hold the pencil. He wrote to Selma. He wrote to keep the bond between them from breaking, so faint now did the memory of his love seem, so arbitrary the object of his desire. He devoted the next few days to his stone out of mere loyalty. A chivalrous feeling ran through him when he touched it. He wanted to cry. Cautiously, his thoughts circled around ideas like honour and conscience. Ernst Ludwig Würsich felt ashamed of his own existence. What use was a one-legged, wounded man, after all? He hadn’t so much as set eyes on a Russian, he hadn’t looked an enemy in the face. Still less had he risked his life in some honourable action in this war. The loss of his leg was a pitiful accident and could not be considered any kind of tribute to the enemy. He knew he would go on picking up the stone and putting it down again until the next infection of his wound or his guts struck, setting his body on fire, burning it out, and he sank into fever and the twilight of pain.

Although the winter battle had been won, that success was to remain as remote from Ernst Ludwig Würsich as the question of there being any point in the war. When the field hospital closed down one day just after the end of hostilities, he and the other wounded men were to be taken home. But transport turned out difficult and tedious. Halfway through the journey some of them deteriorated; typhoid spread among them, many died and the survivors were temporarily accommodated in a small colony of huts near Warsaw. From there they went on to Greifswald in a larger convoy of the injured. Week after week now he was told that they were only waiting for his health to improve before sending him back to Bautzen. But however much it improved, there were still stumbling blocks: he needed the financial means to get back and someone to help him physically, and those he did not have. He wrote two or three letters home a month, addressing them to his wife, although he had no way of knowing whether she was even still alive. No answer came. He wrote telling Selma that the stump of his leg refused to heal, although the injuries to his face near the socket of his right eye had healed nicely and the skin around the scars was smoothing out more every day. Or at least, so his sense of touch told him; he couldn’t know for certain because he had no mirror. He hoped she’d recognize him. Of all his features, his nose was almost the same, he said. Yes, his face had healed up extremely well, he assured her, very likely it was only on close inspection, and by drawing conclusions from the rest of his physiognomy, that anyone could see where the right eye had once been. In future, when they went to the theatre, he’d be glad to borrow the gilded opera-glasses he had given her for their first wedding anniversary, and then at last he’d offer her his monocle in exchange. He knew she’d always thought the monocle suited her better than him, he added.

That, he thought, might at least make his wife smile her enchanting smile if she were still alive, if she read his letter, if she learned about his injuries from it. Merely imagining the sparkle of her eyes, their colour changing between green and brown and yellow, sent a shiver of desire and a sense of well-being down his spine. Even the pain, so far unidentified, that sprang from a sore place on his coccyx, throbbing and spreading up his back as if the upper layers of skin were being sliced into very thin strips, even that he could ignore for minutes at a time.

How was he to guess that his wife Selma handed the letters to her housekeeper Mariechen for safe keeping, unread and still sealed?

With abhorrence, Selma Würsich told Mariechen that she felt more and more disgusted to be receiving wartime letters from That Man — as she now referred to him — a man who, allegedly for love of her but against her express wish, had wanted to go off and be a hero. She thought that in these signs of life from him she detected a kind of mockery, something of which she had suspected her husband for no real reason ever since they had known each other. Inwardly, she was waiting for the day of his return and her chance to say, with a shrug of her shoulders expressing utter indifference, the following words of welcome: Oh, so you’re still with us, are you?

After the first weeks when he went missing, and the following weeks and months of fury that he had ever gone away at all, such a display of indifference promised to be her ultimate triumph. The Wendish housekeeper, that old maid, as Ernst Ludwig had once described Mariechen in their daughters’ hearing, was now the only person to whom she ever spoke, not that she spoke much at all.

Selma Würsich lay in wait season by season. She had no time to spare; an inner restlessness chased her out of doors in spring. Suddenly, there stood one of her daughters in front of her asking something, the word Ascension came into it, and Selma was turning away, for such words, she thought, were none of her business, but still they rang in her ears; a pair of eyes belonging to one of her daughters was fixed on her, but it couldn’t possibly be anything to do with her. She simply said she didn’t want to be disturbed, and demanded peace and quiet.

She left decorating the Easter eggs to Mariechen, who was better at it anyway. Indeed, Selma found being with other people more and more of a burden, she simply lacked the patience to tolerate her daughters’ chattering and questions. How gratefully, in secret, she thanked heaven for Mariechen, who kept their cheerful company at a distance from her.

In summer Selma picked the last few cherries from the large unpruned tree that had been plundered for weeks by the street urchins and her own daughters. To go cherry-picking she wore one of her broad-brimmed hats, a hat with a veil beneath which she could watch the Kornmarkt less conspicuously, and as she stood on the ladder she kept looking the way she thought she would see her husband approaching. Sitting on the steps in front of the house with her basket full of cherries, she nibbled the meagre, maggoty fruit off the stones. It tasted sour and slightly bitter. She laid out the stones to dry in the sun, where they bleached like bones. Every few days she took a handful of cherry stones and shook them in the hollow of her hands. The sound warmed her. Happiness might sound like that, thought Selma.

In autumn she once thought she saw her husband trudging through the fallen leaves on the opposite side of the street, and turned back quickly so that she would be at home when he arrived. She tried hard to feel nothing but indifference. But her efforts were wasted; the doorbell was silent and he did not appear. The man trudging through the leaves must have been someone else, probably a man who, welcomed home with a passionate embrace, was now sitting laughing with his wife over their supper of hot cabbage soup.

Early in winter Selma Würsich removed any green walnut husks and those already black and dried from the inner shells with a knife, and as she worked she looked out of the window into slowly drifting snow. Flakes tumbled up and down as if ignorant of the force of gravity. She often saw him coming down Tuchmacherstrasse. He would have aged in these last few years, he would smell of strange places. If he came back — well, he’d soon see!

But her long wait for next spring and summer, for the delightful revenge she longed for, was followed by a time of exhaustion. Business was slow; hardly anyone wanted anything printed. Paper was getting expensive. While Selma sat at the window, empty-eyed, Helene worked out new prices for letterheads and death announcements every quarter. Sales of picture postcards were so poor that she hadn’t been able to get any more printed for months, and there were hardly any orders for menus, since most landlords and café owners wrote up the names of their few dishes on blackboards. The savings of the pre-war period, when the printing works were still flourishing and Helene’s father had begun printing marriage advice manuals, collections of crossword puzzles and finally poems, suddenly lost their old value. The number of copies of the calendar they sold annually had recently dropped to less than a hundred. Designing the calendar pages for 1920 looked like costing more than prospective sales would bring in.

Acting on an idea that came to her one night, Helene’s mother had begun paying the wages of the typesetter who had worked for the firm for many years several months in advance. She obviously thought that this was a way to counter the price rises and help her to get around them, so to speak. But fewer and fewer orders came in, and the typesetter sat around without any work to do, solving crossword puzzles. Booklets of the puzzles piled up in the stockroom because no one was buying them any more. The army hadn’t accepted the typesetter as a wartime recruit because he was too small and his legs were too short. His wife and eight children went hungry with him, many of the children begged for bread and lard in the Kornmarkt, and they were always being caught stealing apples and nuts.

One evening Selma found a handful of sugar cubes in the typesetter’s overall pocket, after he had hung it up beside the door before going home from work. Because of the shape and colour of the sugar cubes, she found it easy to believe they had been stolen from her kitchen. Next morning she felt sorry for the man when she saw him sitting there with no work to do. Selma felt a great reluctance to speak to him about the sugar and how much he was costing her. She expected excuses and thought she would rather find a way to stop employing him. She would get him to teach her younger daughter how to set type, and handle the characters and the press. After all, she wouldn’t have to pay Helene for the few jobs and orders that still came in.

The girl was bored to death in her last year of school; it was time she made herself useful. Helene’s mother would not give in to her ardent wish to go on to a High School for Girls. If she had found school so tedious until now, it seemed to Selma far too expensive an indulgence to pay for her to do nothing in comfort for another two years.

Selma Würsich stood at the window and looked up Tuchmacherstrasse, holding her dressing gown closed. It was days since she had been able to find its belt. The bells were ringing; her daughters would soon come out of church. Selma was not at all happy with the idea that her younger daughter might become a teacher and had once, in her artless, childlike way, even expressed a wish to study medicine. That child is unruly and rebellious, she whispered to herself.

Martha was arm in arm with Helene as they strolled down the street from the Kornmarkt. Selma saw a violet satin gift-wrap ribbon lying on the glass display case. Mariechen must have rolled it up tidily and put it down there. Selma put it round her dressing gown instead of the missing belt. With great care, she tied a bow and smiled at her idea. Now she heard the shrill sound of the doorbell ringing.

Come up here, I want to speak to you two! Their mother was standing on the landing, beckoning to Helene and Martha to join her. She didn’t wait until the girls were sitting down.

You’ve been doing the accounts for years, Helene, it wouldn’t hurt you to learn the practical side of the business too. Their mother cast a cautious glance at her elder daughter, whose criticism she feared. But Martha’s mind seemed to be somewhere else. Even now I couldn’t manage the deliveries without your bookkeeping, and you see to buying paper and the maintenance of the press. The typesetter will eat us out of house and home one of these days. It would be a good idea to get him to show you what you need to know, and then we could fire him.

Helene’s eyes were shining. Wonderful, she whispered. She flung her arms round Martha’s neck, kissed her and cried: First of all I’ll print us some money and then I’ll print a book of family records for you.

Martha shook Helene off. She went red and said nothing. Their mother took Helene by the arm and forced her down on her knees.

What nonsense! I don’t like to hear you sound so delighted, child. The work won’t be easy, you know. Then she let go and Helene was able to stand up again.

Untroubled, Helene looked at her mother. She wasn’t surprised to find that Selma thought the work difficult; after all, her mother very seldom entered the rooms housing the printing works — she had probably never seen type being set, and from a distance the business must seem to her mysterious. Helene thought of the clicking and quiet chuffing of the press, the crunch of the rollers. How differently people could see something! What appeared all right to the typesetter made Helene uneasy. She had a clear picture of herself spacing the letters and words properly at long last, with the gaps between them ensuring harmony and clarity. The idea of operating the big press on her own was exciting. She had often wanted to improve on the typesetter’s work.

Selma was watching Helene. Those shining eyes seemed uncanny to her. The child’s joy made her seem even taller and more radiant than usual.

What you lack, said her mother sternly, is a certain sense of proportion. Her voice was cutting, every word finely judged. You don’t understand the natural order of things. That is why you find it hard to recognize order among us all. Subordination, my child, is important and you’ll be able to learn it from our typesetter. Subordination and humility.

Helene felt the blood rise to her face. She lowered her eyes. Darkness and light broke apart, colours blurred. She had no idea yet what to say in reply. The kaleidoscope went round and round, several times a rusty nail moved near some walnut shells, you never knew when that nail or those shells might come in useful. It was some seconds before she had a clear picture inside her again. Her mother, who as Helene now saw was wearing the violet satin ribbon, looked all done up like a present. The violet bow shook as Mother spoke. It wants to be undone, Helene thought, it really does. Helene scrutinized the maternal landscape, consisting as it did of remnants of clothes, feather dusters encrusted with black blood at the ends of the quills, pillowcases with cherry stones coming out of the holes in their corners and mountains of old newspapers. She could not make out the summit from which her mother was trying to tell her something about understanding the established order of things. Helene could not raise her eyes to meet her mother’s. She looked for help to Martha, but this time Martha did not come to her aid.

Within a few weeks Helene lost her veneration for the pièce de résistance in her father’s printing works. The platen press, which bore the brand name Monopol, no longer inspired awe in her but demanded physical effort. While the typesetter, who was too small for his legs to reach the pedal from her father’s stool, skilfully raised one of those short legs and kept the pedal in motion by kicking it vigorously, at Helene’s first attempts she couldn’t move it a millimetre. Although she could work the sewing machine and had no difficulty in keeping it going by stepping on the treadle, the Monopol press obviously called for a man’s strength. Helene put both feet on the pedal and pushed down. The wheel simply jerked forward once. The typesetter laughed. Perhaps he’d like to show her how to clean the rollers, said Helene sharply, looking pointedly at the thick layer of dust lying on them.

She wasn’t going to accept that she wasn’t physically strong enough to learn to use the press. As soon as the typesetter had left in the evening, she went over to the Monopol and practised with her right leg. She leaned on the paper holder and trod down and down again, until the big wheel was turning faster and faster and the friction of the rollers made a wonderfully deep sound. She was sweating, but she couldn’t stop.

By day the typesetter showed her how to use the stitching machine, the pressing machine and the stapling machine. He taught her assiduously, as he had been told to do, but he kept saying, with a twinkle in his eye, that the Monopol would obey only its master. And since her father had gone away, he obviously felt that he was its master now. The certainty that, as he thought, he was indispensable cheered the typesetter.

No one knew that over the past few years a friendly working relationship had developed between the typesetter and Helene. He was the first adult to take her seriously. Ever since she began helping with her father’s accounts at the age of seven, and now, because he was away in the war, had taken over the purchase of supplies as well as the bookkeeping, the typesetter had treated her with great respect. He called her Fräulein Würsich. Helene liked that. And he accepted all her calculations without demur.

Even when Helene could not comply fully with his request for higher wages after the war, nothing about his friendly attitude changed. He discussed the work on hand with her. And if one of the machines needed servicing, he referred back to Helene, particularly now that her mother was disappearing into the upper part of the house for months on end, closing the net curtains and turning her back on the windows. Helene liked the typesetter. It was she who would go up to the kitchen, search the pantry, look round several times to make quite sure no one could see her and fold newspaper to make a paper bag, fill it with pearl barley, put semolina into another bag and finally place a cucumber, a kohlrabi and a handful of nuts in a third. When she found the huge cardboard box of sugar cubes on the top shelf of the pantry one day, she unhesitatingly tore a page off the Bautzen Household Calendar, wrapped a heap of cubes in it and gave that to the typesetter too.

As soon as he had left in the evening Helene went back to practising on the Monopol press in secret. After a few days she practised with her left leg as well as her right. She practised until she couldn’t go on. And when she couldn’t practise any more she practised overcoming not being able to practise any more, and got on with it. In the evening she could feel how strong her legs were growing, and next morning she felt an unaccustomed tugging in them. She knew what it was, but before now she had only ever heard boys say they had cramp in their legs.

One evening she sat high up on her father’s stool, which was fixed to the floor. To her surprise she didn’t even have to stretch her legs; the stool could have been made specially for her. She put both feet on the pedal and trod away. She had to pull in her stomach firmly, which caused a pleasant, tickling sensation; she felt a fluttering inside, as if she were on a swing. She was reminded of Martha’s hands and Martha’s soft breasts.

Only when Selma Würsich asked, a few weeks later, whether her daughter had learned all about the printing press now, did the typesetter demonstrate the cutting machine to her. So far he had avoided even taking her anywhere near it. A dark presentiment now took shape in his mind. He looked at her fair hair, which she wore plaited into a thick braid, and found that he could bring out the words only reluctantly. His comments were brief. First open it. Then adjust it. The typesetter placed the rulers one above the other like battens. Place the paper here.

Without a word of apology, the typesetter pushed Helene slightly aside and showed her, in silence, how she must first knock the stack of paper together and then straighten it to fit it into the machine. As he saw it, the cutting machine was dangerous, not because Helene was a tender young girl of only just thirteen, but because now she could operate all the machinery, everything but the Monopol press.

Mother told Mariechen to roast a joint of beef with a thyme-flavoured crust for Martha’s twenty-second birthday. As always when there was meat, she ate none of it herself. No one discussed her reasons, but her daughters agreed in thinking they were to do with certain dietary regulations. There was no kosher butcher in Bautzen. It was said that the Kristallerer family asked the butcher to slaughter meat specially for their needs, and there was a rumour that they even took him their own knives for the purpose. But Mother obviously didn’t feel comfortable about getting such things done if everyone in town would know about it. And perhaps she meant it when she said she simply didn’t like meat.

Martha had been allowed to ask her friend Leontine to her birthday party. Mother wore a long dress of coffee-coloured velvet. She had lengthened the hem herself with lace that looked to Helene unsuitable and a little ridiculous. Helene had put Martha’s hair in curlers the evening before and let it dry overnight. Now she spent the afternoon pinning up her sister’s hair and weaving silk mallow flowers into the little braids, so that in the end Martha looked like a princess, and a little like a bride too. Then Helene helped Mariechen to lay the table. The valuable Chinese porcelain came out of the sideboard, napkins were placed in silver rose-petal rings that had come with Mother’s trousseau and were otherwise used only at Christmas.

When the bell rang, Martha and Helene hurried to the door at the same time. Leontine was standing outside, her face hidden behind a big bunch of flowers and grasses that she had obviously picked in the meadows: cornflowers, rue, barley. She laughed merrily and turned once in a circle. She had cut her hair short. Where there used to be a chignon severely pinned back behind her head, you could now see her ear and her white neck as her short hair swirled in the air. Helene couldn’t take her eyes off the sight.

Later, at dinner, Helene’s eyes were fixed on Leontine. She tried to look away, but she couldn’t. She admired Leontine’s long neck. Leontine was both slender and strong. Helene could see every vein and sinew in her forearms. She worked with Martha at the Municipal Hospital, not as a ward sister yet, she was much too young for that, but at the age of twenty-three she had been head nurse in the operating theatre for several months. Leontine was the surgeon’s favourite nurse. She could lift any patient by herself, and during operations her hands were so steady and sure that the surgeon, who had only recently been appointed professor, was always asking her to stitch up difficult wounds.

When Leontine laughed, her laughter was long and deep.

Helene spent her time with Martha and Leontine whenever she had a chance. The way Leontine laughed went far down inside you. When she sat down, you could clearly see her bony knees parted under her skirt. She sat there with her legs spread, not at all embarrassed, as if that position were perfectly natural. Now and then she put her hand on her knee and bent her arm slightly, so that the elbow stood out at an angle. These were short, sharp movements that told a tale of unhappiness, but then her deep laugh would follow. Leontine usually laughed on her own. Martha and Helene listened open-mouthed to her laughter; perhaps that would help it to seep down inside them too and reach the pit of the stomach. It took Martha and Helene some time even to guess what Leontine had been laughing at. They must look silly, sitting there. They didn’t shake their heads out of any idea that Leontine’s laughter was misplaced, but because it amazed them. Helene specially liked Leontine’s voice, which was firm and clear.

As they sat around the table on Martha’s birthday, with the roast beef in front of them, Leontine said: My father’s going to let me study.

Study? Mother was surprised.

Yes, he thinks it would be a good idea. I could earn more money then.

Mother shook her head. But studying costs money. She handed Leontine the dish of potato dumplings.

I don’t want to study, though. Leontine pushed the dark hair back from her forehead. It now fell sideways, like a man’s.

Mother nodded in agreement. Very understandable. Who wants to learn useless things? Nurses are in constant demand. A nurse can always find a job anywhere, at any time.

What sort of useless things? Helene looked enquiringly at Leontine, who was just putting a large piece of roast beef in her mouth.

Well, perhaps not so very useless, replied Leontine, but I don’t want to go away. Away from what, Helene wondered. As if Leontine could hear her thoughts, she said: Away from Bautzen. Helene accepted that, although she doubted it.

Mother nodded again. Helene wondered whether she really understood what Leontine was saying; after all, she had never taken root in Bautzen herself in all these years, far from it. Mother was always restless in Bautzen. As Helene saw it, there couldn’t be many reasons why Leontine would want to stay here. Her father was a well-respected lawyer; he was also a widower and a drinker, both in moderation, as he saw it. He preferred his younger daughters to Leontine and if he went away on work he always took one of the younger girls with him, bringing her back in a new dress or carrying a fashionable parasol. Leontine’s father was a prosperous man; you couldn’t call his eldest daughter a Cinderella forced to do menial work, nor was she ill-used, but she seemed to be in her father’s way. It troubled him that Leontine didn’t get married. From time to time he made suggestions to her, and then they quarrelled. Since the death of his wife over ten years earlier, he had lived alone with his three daughters and his mother-in-law, whose mind had been confused for years. On Sundays he went to St Peter’s Cathedral, walking past the Town Hall arm in arm with his younger daughters, one to right and one to left of him. His mother-in-law followed a few steps behind with the cook, and it looked as if Leontine had no established place in this family. It was left to Leontine herself to choose her company. She usually helped her grandmother along, but as soon as they reached the church and she saw Martha among the cluster of people in the porch, she seized her chance to go to a pew hand in hand with her friend. Here she sat between Martha and Helene, in the place that, in their thoughts, they left free for their father. Even though the war was over, he wasn’t home yet. She liked it when, during the service, Martha placed her hand with its long and beautiful fingers beside her own and they linked fingers. Then she sometimes felt a warm weight on her other side: it was Helene leaning her face against Leontine’s arm as if she had found a mother in her.

Hardly a day passed when Martha didn’t bring Leontine home from the hospital with her to Tuchmacherstrasse. They did the housework together and, depending on their shifts at work, they helped out on the big bleaching ground in the meadows by the Spree. They were inseparable.

Wild horses wouldn’t drag me away from here, Leontine assured them as she took a rather small potato dumpling, and it did not escape Helene’s notice that Martha’s elbow was touching Leontine’s, although the two of them avoided exchanging any glance that might give them away.

Eat up your meat, girls. Helene, how are you getting on in the printing works? Mother smiled with a certain derision. You usually learn so fast. Can you do it all? Is there anything you don’t yet know?

How am I to know what I don’t yet know? Helene helped herself to a slice of beef.

Mother rolled her eyes. She sighed. Perhaps, miss, you would be kind enough just to answer my question.

How am I supposed to answer the question when I don’t know the answer?

Then I’ll answer it for you, dear.

Mother had never before called her dear. It sounded like a foreign word, sharply spoken as if Mother wanted to show Martha’s friend how kind she was to her children, although it didn’t come easily to her. It’s been ten weeks now, she said, plenty of time for you to have learned all that matters. What you don’t know yet, you’ll have to learn as you go along. I’m dismissing the typesetter tomorrow. Without notice.

What? Martha dropped her fork. Mother, he has eight children.

So? I have two children myself, don’t I? We have no man around the house. We can’t pay the typesetter any longer. We aren’t making any profit these days. You know that better than anyone, Helene. What did last year look like in the accounts?

Helene put down her knife and fork. She picked up her napkin and dabbed her mouth with it. Better than this year.

And worse than any year before, am I right?

Helene did not nod. She hated the idea of presenting Mother with the words and gestures she expected.

There we are, then. The typesetter is dismissed.

Helene found the next few weeks a difficult time. She wasn’t used to being alone all day. The typesetter hadn’t been seen since the day he was dismissed. He was said to have left the town with his family. Helene sat in the printing works day after day, waiting for customers who never came. She was supposed to be studying from Martha’s book for the admission examination she must take for nursing, but she just leafed through it and found hardly anything she didn’t already know. The exact sequence of compresses and bandaging to be used for various illnesses was part of the final nursing exam rather than this one. Most of the book was concerned with what you would have to learn during your training, and after she had leafed through it the few details she hadn’t known before were fixed in her memory. So Helene began reading other books, the books that she found on her father’s shelves. His daughters were forbidden to take any volumes out of that mighty bookcase, but even in the old days when Father was still here, his daughters had felt that it was a particularly exciting adventure and a test of their courage to borrow those precious books. They would push Stifter’s The Condor further to the left so as not to leave a gap where Kleist’s The Marquise of O, had been standing. The books stood in no particular order on their father’s shelves, which upset Helene a little, but she wasn’t sure whether her mother kept an eye on this disorder, or what might happen if she took it upon herself to rearrange the books in alphabetical order. As she read, Helene kept her ears pricked, and as soon as she heard a sound she hid the book under her apron. She often looked out of the door when she thought she heard Leontine’s deep voice. Once, quite unexpectedly, the door opened and Martha and Leontine came in, laughing, with a big basket.

Goodness, how red your cheeks are! said Leontine, passing her hand briefly over Helene’s hair. I hope you aren’t running a temperature?

Helene shook her head. She had a treasure tucked under her apron. She had found it on the very top shelf of the bookcase, wrapped in newspaper and lying behind the other books as if hidden away. It was more than a hundred years old. The cardboard binding was covered with coloured paper and there was an embossed title: Penthesilea. A Tragedy. Helene apologized briefly to Martha and Leontine, bent down behind the big wooden counter and hid her treasure in the lowest drawer there. She put some of the old Bautzen Household Almanacs over the book to conceal it.

A farmer from the Lusatian Hills had given Leontine the basket of peas as a thank-you present. Months ago, she had splinted a difficult break of his wrist. Now Leontine put the big basket on the counter in front of Helene. It was full of plump green pea pods. Helene immediately plunged both hands into the basket and ploughed them through the pods. They had a young, grassy smell. Helene loved popping pods open with her thumb and the sensation of pushing out the smooth, gleaming, green peas from top to bottom in order of size, to roll down her thumb and into the bowl. She would put the tiny peas that weren’t fully mature yet straight into her mouth. Martha and Leontine were talking about something that Helene wasn’t supposed to understand, giggling and gurgling. They spoke only in mysterious half-sentences.

He was asking all the nurses and the patients about you. Oh, and to see his face when he finally found you! Martha was amused.

Dear child. Leontine rolled her eyes as she spoke, obviously imitating the farmer.

Oh, I come over all peculiar when I see you, nurse! Martha put in. She was spluttering with laughter. Nurse, I’m yours heart and soul!

He didn’t say that? Leontine was laughing too.

He did. You should have seen the way his hand kept going to his trousers. I thought he was going to fall on you there and then.

But our dear professor didn’t think it was funny at all: oh, take your peas and go away, you seem to have finished work at noon today. Leontine sighed. And usually I can never stay too long for him.

Are you surprised? Didn’t you hear what he said to the ward sister about you the other day: she may look like a flapper, but she’s something of a bluestocking!

He thinks highly of you, but his fears are growing.

Fears? Leontine waved the idea away. Our professor doesn’t know the meaning of fear. Why, anyway? I’m a nurse, that’s all.

The girls were shelling the peas now.

A long silence followed. But suppose you do go away after all? Martha was bracing herself for anything.

Helene didn’t want to see her sister’s grave face now. She tried to imagine she was invisible.

Leontine did not react.

Go away to Dresden, I mean. To study. That’s what everyone is saying you’ll do.

Never. Leontine hesitated. Not unless you come with me.

That’s stupid, Leontine, just plain stupid. Martha sounded both sad and stern. You know I can’t.

There you are, then, said Leontine. In that case nor can I.

Martha put her hand on the nape of her friend’s neck, drew her face close and kissed her on the lips.

Helene’s breath faltered; she quickly turned away. There must be something she ought to do, look for something on the top shelf of the bookcase, or maybe take a stack of paper out of its pigeonhole and put it on the desk. The picture seemed to be burned on her retina: Martha drawing Leontine towards her, Leontine pursing her lips ready for the kiss. Perhaps Helene had mistaken what she saw? She risked a cautious glance over her shoulder. Leontine and Martha were bending over the basket full of pea pods, and it was as if there had never been a kiss at all.

But suppose you took her with you? She could train as a nurse in Dresden. Leontine was speaking quietly, now, and her glance went to Helene. Helene acted as if she had heard nothing and hadn’t realized that they were talking about her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Martha shaking her head. There was another long silence. Helene felt that her presence was inhibiting their conversation. At first she thought of leaving the two of them alone and going out, but next moment she felt rooted to the spot. She couldn’t move her feet; she severed the umbilical cords of the peas and felt a sense of shame. She didn’t want Leontine to leave them, she didn’t want Martha and Leontine to stop talking because of her, and she didn’t want Martha and Leontine to kiss each other either.

That evening in bed, Helene turned her back to Martha. Martha could scratch her own back, she thought. Helene didn’t want to cry. She breathed deeply and her eyes swelled, her nose felt smaller and stuffed up. Breathing was difficult.

Helene didn’t want to count freckles either, or feel for Martha’s stomach under the blanket. She thought of the kiss. And while she imagined kissing Leontine, knowing that only Martha would kiss her, tears escaped from her eyes.

Mother expected Helene to run the printing works so that no red figures had to be written in the accounts books. She found that easier every day. A profit recently entered could easily compensate for the losses of the early part of the year, which appeared numerically slight by comparison. What that meant wasn’t clear to Mother. She was just surprised to see how seldom Helene ran any of the machines.

Not wishing to waste stocks of paper, Helene designed simple calculation tables. She suspected that people could make good use of her ready reckoners in these times of rising prices.

The mere sight of one of her ready reckoners cheered Helene up. How nice and straight her figures were! It had been worth giving the figure 8 more space than the others, and the margin was so neat.

When news of the typesetter’s dismissal got around town, it wasn’t long before Frau Hantusch the baker’s wife put an unusually small and over-baked loaf down on her counter when Helene went to buy bread.

Helene asked if she could please have one of the two larger, lighter-coloured loaves still on the shelf instead. But the baker’s wife, who used to press little pieces of butter-cake into her hand only a few years ago, shook her head as well as anyone with almost no neck could. The deep line marking the short distance between her breasts and her head didn’t move at all as she shook it. Helene ought to be glad she could still buy a loaf at all, she said. Helene took it.

You poor thing. The baker’s wife was short of breath, her heavy lids covered her eyes, her words expressed sympathy but her tone was both indignant and injured. Operating heavy machinery these days. A girl, working machinery! The baker’s wife shook her head again in her laborious way.

Helene stopped in the doorway. It’s not hard to learn, she said, and felt as if she were lying. I’ve printed some very nice ready reckoners. I can bring you one on Monday if you like, we could do a deal — you get a ready reckoner, I get four loaves of bread.

Nothing doing, said the baker’s wife.

Three?

To think of girls at a man’s work these days, we can’t have that kind of thing. Your mother’s well off. Why didn’t she let the typesetter keep his job?

Don’t worry, I’ll be starting to train as a nurse in September. We don’t have anything left. Most of what we did have was money, and money’s worth nothing now.

The baker’s wife raised her eyebrows sceptically. These days everyone suspected their neighbours of owning more than they did. Helene remembered how, early this year when she had wanted to do something to please her mother, she had gone into her room and stripped the sheets off the bed to do a big wash. Only when she lifted the mattress to put a clean sheet on it did she see the banknotes. Huge quantities of them tucked into its stuffing. Notes of many different currencies, bundles of them tucked among the feathers and held together with paperclips. The numbers printed on the notes were of small denominations, ridiculously small. As Helene, alarmed by her unintentional discovery, hastily threw the old sheet over the mattress again, she heard her mother’s voice behind her.

You little devil. How much have you stolen from me already? Come on, how much?

Helene turned and saw her mother leaning on the door frame, so angry that she could hardly stay upright leaning against it. She was drawing on her thin cigar as if extracting information from it.

I’ve been asking myself for years: Selma, I’ve been asking myself, who in this house is stealing from you? Her voice sounded low and threatening. And all these years I’ve been telling myself, well, it won’t have been your daughter, Selma, never, not your own child.

I was only going to change the sheets, Mother.

What an excuse, what a mean, shabby excuse. And with these words her mother went for Helene, clutching her throat so tightly that she could breathe only by raising her hand against her mother to push her away with all her might. She pinched her mother’s arms, but they would not loosen their grip. Helene tried to scream and couldn’t. Not until footsteps came up the stairs, and Mariechen audibly cleared her throat, did her mother let go.

Helene had not set foot in her mother’s room since then. She remembered how scared she had been at the sight of those banknotes and wondered how, with her own faultless bookkeeping, her mother could have contrived to put them all aside. Money that, as Helene was sure, was worth hardly anything now. Money that, if it had been spent at the right time, would have kept the whole household going and might have allowed her to study.

Helene looked at Frau Hantusch the baker’s wife. She couldn’t help thinking that the woman’s doubts arose from discontent with her own situation.

Last week we had some particularly good stout paper in. Paper with a high proportion of wax in it. Helene smiled as nicely as she could. It stands up to moisture well, it would be just the thing in your shop.

Thanks, Lenchen, thank you very much, but I can tell my customers the daily price of bread myself. The baker’s wife pointed to her mouth with one fat forefinger. It’s all in here, that’s what counts. Having it on paper would just be a waste of money.

When Ernst Ludwig Würsich, arriving unannounced one evening in late November, asked the male nurse who had brought him the last few kilometres to Bautzen in a cart to knock on the front door of his house, and Mariechen, alarmed to be roused so late, opened it, hardly recognized him, but finally let him and the male nurse into the parlour as a few words of explanation were exchanged — when he came home his wife’s mind was clouded. Her chamber pot was left outside her door every few hours; that was all anyone saw of her. It was usually Mariechen who emptied it, and three times a day she left a small tray with a meal there. The girls’ mother lay in bed, and for several weeks she had managed to prevent either of her daughters or Mariechen from entering the room.

Their father was taken into the parlour and settled in his armchair. He looked around and asked: My wife, doesn’t my wife live here?

Of course. Mariechen laughed in relief. The mistress is just tidying herself. Would you like a cup of tea, sir?

No, I’d rather wait for her, said Ernst Ludwig Würsich, and with every word he spoke more slowly.

How are you feeling, sir? Mariechen’s voice was higher than usual, clear as a bell, she was anxious to while away the time for him as he waited for the lady of the house to come down, even make him forget it was taking so long.

How am I feeling? The girls’ father looked into space with his one remaining eye. Well, usually I feel as if I’m the man whom my wife sees in me. He suppressed a groan. It looked as if he were smiling.

Although Mariechen said she had let the girls’ mother know as soon as he arrived, her mistress still did not appear. Helene warmed up the soup left over from midday and Martha found something for the male nurse to eat. The man left soon afterwards. Ernst Ludwig Würsich found speaking as difficult as standing up. He spent the first few hours after his return huddled in his big armchair. His daughters sat with him, taking a great deal of trouble not to show that they noticed his missing leg. But looking into his face was difficult; it was as if their own eyes kept moving from his one remaining open eye to the socket now closed by skin that had grown over it, again and again their glances kept slipping that way until they couldn’t stop. The girls tried to find some kind of lifeline; it was more than they could manage to keep looking at just that one eye. They asked about these last few years. Their questions were general; to avoid anything personal, the sisters asked about victory and defeat. Ernst Ludwig Würsich could not answer any of their questions. When his mouth twisted it looked as if he were in great pain, but he was trying to smile. The smile was intended to keep these young ladies, as his daughters now appeared to him, from asking questions. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He was filled with pain.

Helene knocked on her mother’s door and pushed it open, in spite of the books and clothes and lengths of fabric stacked up just inside.

Our father has come home, Helene whispered into the darkness.

Who?

Our father. Your husband.

It’s night-time. I’m sleeping.

Helene kept still. Perhaps her mother hadn’t understood what she said? She stood in the doorway, unwilling to go yet.

Oh, go away. I’ll come down as soon as I feel better.

Helene hesitated. She couldn’t believe that her mother was going to stay in bed. But then she heard her turning over and pulling up the blankets.

Quietly, Helene retreated and closed the door.

Obviously her mother didn’t feel well enough to come down over the next few days either. So the injured master of the house was carried past her bedroom door and up to the top floor, where they laid him down on the right-hand side of the marital bed. Within a few days the dusty bedroom that he and his wife once shared had been turned into a hospital ward. On Martha’s instructions, Helene helped Mariechen to carry up a washstand. During his arduous journey home Ernst Ludwig Würsich’s stump had become inflamed again, and in addition he now had a slightly raised temperature. Pain numbed all his other senses. Not for the first time, it was in the missing leg that he felt it.

For her father’s own sake, Martha arranged to keep him in a carefully calculated state of intoxication. It was meant to last until she had managed to abstract morphine and cocaine in sufficient quantities to be effective from the Municipal Hospital. Martha had been working with Leontine in the operating theatre for some time, and she knew the right moment when such substances could be purloined. The ward sister was of course the only one who had the key to the poison cupboard, but there were some situations in which she had to entrust it to Leontine. Who, later on, was going to measure exactly how many milligrams this or that patient had been given?

Next morning Mariechen made Father a new nightshirt. The window was open; you could hear the crows perching in the young elms outside. Mariechen had hung the girls’ quilts over the windowsill to air. In the evening they smelled of wood and coal. Helene had gone down to the printing works, and had spent some time sitting over the big book with the monthly accounts when the bell rang.

A well-dressed gentleman was waiting outside the door. He stooped slightly and his left arm was missing. With his right arm he was leaning on a walking stick. Helene knew him by sight; he had sometimes come to the printing works in the old days.

Grumbach, he introduced himself. He cleared his throat. He had heard, he said, that his old friend, the master printer who had published his own first poems, was home again. More throat-clearing. It was six years since they had met, he said, and he really felt he must pay his friend a visit. The moist sound as he cleared his throat was obviously not shyness but a frequent necessity. No, Grumbach wouldn’t sit down.

It’s a long time since we last met, Helene heard him telling her father. She couldn’t take her eyes off Herr Grumbach; she was afraid that he was coming too close to her father with all that throat-clearing. Her father looked at him. His lips moved.

Perhaps he might feel better tomorrow? The visitor seemed to be asking himself this question rather than anyone else; he looked neither at Helene nor the maid. Clearing his throat once more, he left.

Contrary to expectations, the visitor did ring the bell again next day. His eyes lit up when he saw Martha, who was not on duty at the hospital that day. He left his umbrella at the door, but politely declined the cup of tea that Helene offered him.

Next day he did accept a cup of tea, and after that he came to visit daily, without waiting to be expressly invited. He drank a great deal of tea, emptying cup after cup, and noisily munching the sugar lump in it. The sugar bowl had to be refilled at every visit. With his remaining thumb, the one-armed guest indicated his back, which still had a shell splinter from the war left in it, so that he walked with a stoop and needed a stick. He avoided mentioning the word hump, but said he was feeling fine. He cleared his throat. Helene couldn’t help wondering whether the splinter in his back might have injured his lungs and that was the reason for the constant throat-clearing. Over the past few months, said the guest happily, he had written so many poems that he now had enough to put together in a seven-volume edition of his complete works. He deliberately ignored the fact that his old friend couldn’t answer him, for after the latest injection given to the invalid by his tall and beautiful daughter, his mouth seemed too dry to speak.

Although Martha told Helene to go downstairs and help Mariechen to stone, gently heat and bottle plums, she stayed where she was. The winy aroma of the plums rose to the top storey of the house, getting into every nook and cranny, and clinging to Helene’s hair. She leaned back. She had no intention of leaving the visitor alone with her father and her sister Martha.

How nice that we have time for a good chat at last, said Grumbach, probably appreciating his friend’s customary silence.

Helene looked at the walking stick. Its finely carved ivory handle was in curious contrast to the three little plaques he had screwed to the stick itself. One of them was in several colours, one gold and one silver. At a distance, Helene could not make out what was embossed on them. The further carving at the lower end of the stick showed that it must once have been shortened above the metal tip. Very likely Grumbach had owned that stick for years and years, and after the war its original length had had to be adjusted.

The visitor never took his eyes off Martha as she reached up to open the top of the window. You remember me, don’t you? Old Uncle Gustav? Uncle Gusti? said the visitor, looking Martha’s way, and he must have been glad of her kind smile, which might mean anything, either that yes, she did remember him or that she was pleased to see him again.

Grumbach had settled into the wing chair near his friend’s bed, but he could sit there only if he stooped over. He was sucking his sugar lump to the accompaniment of the familiar throat-clearing and a slight smacking of his lips. Such a big lump of sugar called for good strong teeth, but since his third back molar had recently broken he preferred to suck it.

Uncle Gustav, whispered Helene to Martha at the next opportunity, she couldn’t help giggling. The attempt at familiarity and the term Uncle that he used to convey it struck Helene as so outlandish that, in spite of Uncle Gustav’s obvious frailty, she was on the verge of laughter. The silence was punctuated by his slurping tea with his mouth half open. Helene couldn’t take her eyes off him. She saw his gaze wandering over Martha as if their hospitality gave him licence to stare openly at her. At her shining hair pinned up on top of her head, her long white neck, her slender waist, and most of all at what lay below the waist. To all appearances, the sight made Uncle Gustav feel proud and happy. Until a few days ago he had been permitted only to watch Martha from afar; now he felt really close to her at last. Like most of the men who lived near the printing works, he had watched her growing up with a strangely mingled sense of amazement and desire, the latter suppressed only with difficulty. Grumbach made sure that her other admirers remained at a suitable distance, keeping as beady an eye on them as they did on him. Seeing his old friend at home again gladdened his heart no less than the chance it gave him of gaining access to the house and the company of his friend’s daughters. As the guest now watched Martha carefully cleaning the hypodermic needle, turning her back to him, busying herself at the washstand with cloths and essences to help the wound to heal, it was easy to let his walking stick and the hand resting on it move a few centimetres sideways, so that next time Martha turned he could feel the rough fabric of her apron on the back of his hand. That slender waist and what lay just below it. Obviously Martha didn’t even notice the touch; the folds of her dress and apron were too thick; she kept moving this way and that near the washstand. With sly glee the guest relished the way her movements stroked the back of his hand.

Helene watched Uncle Gustav widen his nostrils and sniff. She felt sure that nothing escaped him, that he noticed the aroma of coffee in the air, and while Martha’s involuntary stroking excited him, he might be wondering whether to ask Helene to bring him a cup. He enjoyed sending his friend’s two daughters around the house in search of this and that. Although Martha had warned him not to smoke when he was with her father, he had asked her to bring first an ashtray for his pipe, then a glass of wine, and later he had not turned down the porridge that Helene had made for her father, although Father could eat hardly any of it.

What smelled so good, Grumbach wanted to know every day as he arrived at the house around noon, as if by chance. Rhubarb pudding, a casserole of beans baked with caraway, mashed potatoes with nutmeg. Grumbach said he hadn’t had a watch since the war, adding that without a wife or children you could easily lose track of the time of day. So it was all the more surprising that he came to visit just in time for the midday meal.

When Martha and Helene had helped him to some of everything, hoping he would feel well fed and go away again, Grumbach just stayed put in his chair, cheerfully rocking back and forth, and making himself at home. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, he would unstrap his wooden arm and hand it to Helene to be put in the corner.

How wonderful to see everything growing and flourishing, said the visitor, as his eyes caressed Martha’s back. When she made her father’s bed, bending far over it, her apron parted slightly at the back to show the dress underneath. It seemed to the man that she was bending over just for him.

All gone to rack and ruin, said Helene’s father, blinking.

What, Father? What’s gone to rack and ruin? Martha was at the washstand again, and the guest in the wing chair was getting the back of his hand stroked by her apron.

The house, just look at the paint peeling, flakes of coloured paint everywhere, big ones.

It was true that little had been done to maintain the house in the years of his absence. No one had bothered about the paint, which was fading up here under the roof and peeling off the wall like dead skin.

Grumbach was not to be distracted from his silent lust by his friend, the girls’ father, deploring the state of the house. The touch of Martha’s dress seemed to him too sweet for that. Only when Helene stood up did Martha turn to face them. Her slightly flushed cheeks were shining, her little dimples looked enchanting. The innocence that the guest could read in her wide eyes might make him feel some shame. Helene hoped so.

Can I help you? Helene asked Martha, with a sharp glance at the guest who liked to be called Uncle Gustav.

Martha shook her head. Helene squeezed past Martha and the visitor, and knelt at the head of the bed.

Are you awake? Helene whispered to her father. Since his return she had felt she must speak to him formally. He lacked the ability to overcome the reserve between them in words or by showing her any attention.

Father, it’s me. Your little girl. Your golden girl.

Helene took her father’s hand in hers and kissed it. I’m sure you wonder what we were doing all the time you were away. Her tone was imploring. She wasn’t sure whether her father heard what she was saying. We went to school. Martha taught me to play piano studies: Desolation and then the Well-Tempered Klavier, Father. I’m afraid I don’t have the patience to play the piano. And three years or more ago we went to the railway station with Arthur Cohen and his baggage to see him off. Did Martha tell you about that? But just think, Arthur couldn’t join up to fight in the war. They didn’t want him.

A Jew, said Grumbach, interrupting Helene’s whispering. He leaned back in the wing chair and added, with a derisive click of his tongue, who’d want the likes of him?

Helene half turned to him, just far enough for him to have to see her gaze fixed on the back of his hand as it touched Martha’s dress, and narrowed her eyes. The guest breathed heavily, but he left his hand where it was, on Martha’s apron. Helene supposed he saw that as his due reward for saying no more. She turned back to her father, kissed the palm of his hand, his forefinger, each finger separately, and went on.

When Arthur reported for military service, they said they couldn’t call him up without proof of his residence in Bautzen and they wouldn’t send him to any regiment. Arthur objected, until they finally gave him a medical and told him he had rickets, he’d be no use in the war. He’d better go to Heidelberg and study there, they said, if he had the money and recommendations he’d need. In case of doubt, a young doctor would be more use than a soldier with rickets.

Helene’s father cleared his throat. She went on.

You remember him, don’t you? Arthur Cohen, the wigmaker’s nephew. He went to school here in Bautzen; his uncle paid the fees. He was a good student.

Her father began coughing harder, and Martha glanced up from what she was doing at the washstand to look sternly at Helene. Her expression showed that she was afraid her relationship with Arthur Cohen might come to light. She didn’t want either her father or his guest to know about those walks by the Spree; she didn’t want anyone to know.

So now he’s studying in Heidelberg. Helene paused, took a deep breath; it wasn’t easy for her to utter the word Heidelberg and the explanation: Botany, that’s what he’s studying. And he sent us a letter, he wrote saying that there are women studying medicine in Heidelberg.

Now her father coughed so noisily that Helene’s words were lost, although she had taken great trouble to raise her voice. What else could she say to her father about Heidelberg and studying there? What would fire him with enthusiasm? She hesitated, but next moment he vomited as he coughed. Helene flinched back, taking the visitor’s walking stick with her. If she hadn’t clutched Martha’s dress, and then pushed herself off from the guest’s knees as he sat behind her, she would probably have stumbled and fallen straight on top of him. Since he stooped in the chair, she could easily have fallen on his head and shoulder.

As it was, Helene landed on the floor. Her eyes fell on the badges adorning Grumbach’s walking stick. The civic emblems of Weimar, Cassel, Bad Wildungen. Helene rose to her feet and handed back the stick.

Their guest shook his head. He got up too, took his wooden arm off the bed and placed himself beside Martha. He whispered, loud enough for Helene to hear him: I’m going to ask for your hand in marriage.

No, you are not. There was more contempt than fear in Martha’s voice.

Yes, I am, said their guest. Then he hurried downstairs and out of the door.

Martha and Helene washed their father. Martha showed Helene how to change the compresses on the stump of the leg and what proportion of morphine to add to the injection. She must go carefully, because the last dose wasn’t long ago. Under Martha’s watchful eye, Helene gave her father an injection, the first she had ever given anyone. She was pleased to see the relaxed smile that appeared on his face a little later, a smile that must be meant for her.

Next day, around noon, Grumbach knocked on his friend’s door again. Mariechen opened it. It had been snowing over the Lusatian Hills all night, and when she opened the door the light coming in from the street was so dazzling that Mariechen blinked. Snowflakes lay on the visitor’s hair. He was obviously wearing his best suit. He held not just his stick in his one hand, but also a little basket of walnuts, and they too wore little caps of snow.

Ah, whenever I come visiting there’s such a wonderful aroma in this house, said the uninvited guest. He stamped his feet to get the snow off his shoes. Mariechen stood in the doorway as if she wasn’t sure how far in the visitor could be allowed. Grumbach looked through the open door and spotted the dining table in the parlour. Three full plates stood on it. The guest made his way past Mariechen and into the house. There was a smell of beetroot in the air. Soup spoons lay in the steaming plates as if the company had had to jump up in a hurry and leave the table. The vacated chairs stood a little way apart. While the visitor ceremoniously removed his boots, he ventured a second inquisitive glance at the dining room. Mariechen lowered her eyes, for bumping and clattering sounds were coming from the floor above. Suddenly Selma Würsich’s voice rang out loud and clear.

Your father needs looking after? This was followed by a malicious cackle of laughter. Do you know what looking after someone means? Acting so sweet, and you don’t even fetch a glass of water for your mother! Another bumping sound. Your mother, do you hear? Just you wait, you’ll have to look after me one of these days. Aha. Me, do you hear? Until I die. You’ll have to take my excrement in your hands.

The cackle of laughter died away, changed and turned to sobbing.

Let’s see what’s going on, said the guest, climbing the stairs with determination ahead of Mariechen.

As he reached the top step, a boot flew just past his face and hit the wall. Helene had ducked, so her mother took the second boot and threw that at her too, with all her might.

You brat, you little tick, you’ll be the death of me yet!

Helene put her arms over her head for protection. Her answer came soft but clear: I wouldn’t do you the favour.

No one had noticed the advent of the visitor. He could hardly believe his eyes. If Mariechen had not followed him upstairs, close on his heels, and if she hadn’t been standing behind him now and barring his way down, he would have turned to beat a retreat unseen. There stood Frau Selma in her nightdress, which was cut so low that it showed more of her breasts than surely she could like. Embroidered marguerite daisies ran along the lace edge. But her loose hair swirled in the air and fell in ringlets to her bare shoulders as if it were alive. The silver threads in it gleamed, winding over her breasts like worm trails. Obviously she hadn’t been expecting a visitor, and she still didn’t see him as he stood hesitantly on the top step but one, looking for a way out.

You shameless, spoilt brat!

So who brought me up, Mother?

And to think I’ve been feeding such a child in my house. Her mother snorted. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?

Martha feeds us, Mother, haven’t you noticed? Helene’s voice was level but challenging. Maybe I write the red and black figures in the printing works accounts books for you, but it’s Martha who feeds us. Whose money do you think we use to pay for goods at the market on Saturday? Yours? Do you have any money?

Oh, you little devil, get away from here, clear out! Mother snatched a book from the shelf and flung it in Helene’s direction.

Heavens above. Helene kept her voice low. Why did you give birth to me, Mother? Why did you do it? Why not abort me and send me off to join the angels?

Before the guest could dodge, another book ricocheted off his shoulder.

Don’t say you didn’t know how!

Only now did Selma Würsich notice their visitor. Tears flowed from her eyes, she sank to her knees and said to the guest, in a pleading tone: Did you hear that, sir? Help me! And she calls herself my daughter! She was sobbing uncontrollably.

Excuse me, please. The guest was stammering. He stood hesitantly on the stairs, leaning on his stick with his one hand: Weimar, Cassel, Bad Wildungen, where are you now? He was trembling as he leaned against the banisters for support.

Oh yes, she calls herself my daughter! Mother was shouting now; she wanted the whole town, the entire human race, to hear about her misfortune. It was her soul wanted to come to me, she was the one who chose me.

Helene did not deign to glance at the guest. She murmured quietly: Wanting never came into it.

She straightened up, tidied her hair, and went purposefully upstairs to her father, who was lying there on the right-hand side of the marital bed and did indeed need her care and help. Even before the guest could follow her up, probably assuming that he would find Martha, his old friend’s wife was barring his way. She seized hold of his leg, clasped it in both her hands, she groaned, she whimpered. The visitor turned, looking for Mariechen, but Mariechen had disappeared. He was alone with the foreign woman.

Upstairs, Helene tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. So she sat on the top step in the dark and, unseen, looked down at her mother through the banisters. She was clutching Grumbach’s leg and crawling over the floor at the same time. Grumbach was trying to free himself, but in vain.

Did you see that? Her nails were clawing at Grumbach’s ankles.

Excuse me, repeated the visitor, er, please excuse me. Can I help you up?

At least there’s one person in this house who has a heart. Helene’s mother gave the visitor her hand, hauled herself up heavily, and was finally supporting herself on him and his stick with her bare arms, making him totter. His glance fell on her bosom, moved on to the delicate daisy embroidery, then returned to the locks of dark and silver ringlets falling over her breasts. Finally he tore his eyes away and, with an effort, fixed them on the floor.

As soon as she was upright again she looked down at the stooping man in front of her.

Who are you? she asked in surprise. She pushed back her hair from her face, still ignoring her deep décolleté. Suspiciously, she looked at the man. Do I know you? What are you doing in my house?

Grumbach is my name, Gustav Grumbach. Your husband printed my poems To the Fair One. Grumbach cleared his throat, trying to summon up a trusting smile out of the confusion of the moment.

To the Fair One? The girls’ mother broke into a peal of laughter.

The change from heart-rending tears to loud laughter was so sudden that it sent a shiver running down the visitor’s spine. Perhaps his heart was thudding; at least, he dared not look the woman in the eye. In fact, he didn’t know where to look at all, since he could hardly consider it proper for his eyes to rest on the tiny breasts showing above her nightdress either. For over twenty years he had known Selma Würsich only at a distance. In the past she used to stand behind the wooden counter in the printing works now and then; he must have spoken to her a few times, he just couldn’t remember it at the moment. She had retreated from the life of Bautzen over the years and had been forgotten, had to be forgotten.

Since his return from Verdun, Grumbach had seen her only once, again from a distance. If it had been her. The people of the town said there was something wrong with her. Gustav Grumbach should have felt all the more relieved that the foreign woman had never crossed his path since he began visiting the Würsich household.

To the Fair One? Selma Würsich had assumed a serious expression. She made it a question, and kept hold of the visitor’s shoulder. And who is this Fair One? Who is she supposed to be? While she was still asking, she seemed to be searching for something; she felt in her dressing gown pocket and looked uneasily over the guest’s shoulders. Cigarette? she asked, putting out her hand for a packet standing within reach on the narrow bookshelf.

No, thank you.

Selma Würsich lit one of the slender cigarettes and inhaled deeply. So do you know who this Fair One is? I assume you have someone special in mind, am I right? You know Daumer’s poem, I take it? Waft, ye zephyrs, soft and sweetly. Selma’s voice was hoarse. Waft! she said in a deep and menacing tone. Waft! She laughed, and the cackle hurt Helene, who put both hands over her ears.

Tentatively, Selma Würsich inhaled the smoke of her cigarette and let it out through her nostrils in tiny, cloudy puffs.

Grumbach managed to get out the words: Yes, of course.

This was more of an assertion than anything else, or so at least Helene interpreted the pressure she detected behind the sounds he uttered and his restless eyes.

If thou thine heart wouldst give me… Her mother began the line in a voice laden with meaning.

… then secret let it be./That others may not guess it when they see you with me. Oh yes, of course, that too, said the guest, making haste to complete the couplet. But he seemed unable to summon up much real pleasure in their complicity.

But have you thought what craftiness lies behind that vow of love? No? Yes? What a polemic! I’ll tell you: he wants her to keep her mouth shut so that he’s the only one with any say about their being a couple. And she’s not happy about it. Did you understand that? I mean, it’s monstrous. The reader can but weep to see her words so obviously dismissed, to see him reject her. At least, a woman reader must, she whispered barely audibly, adding out loud: But I don’t see you shedding any tears. You want to triumph over her. To the Fair One! I ask you!

Once again Helene heard her mother’s malicious laughter. A guest like this would have difficulty understanding the depths below it.

As for Heine, the likes of you ought not even to read him. Do you hear me? You betray him rather than understanding him. Oh, you still read him, do you? Are you in your right mind?

One ought not to read him?

Not you. You and your misunderstandings, what a gang! To the Fair One. You know, it won’t do. It’s not simply bad, it is wicked, wicked.

Please be gracious enough to forgive me, madam. The guest was stammering now.

But Helene’s mother seemed to find forgiving difficult.

Gracious? There’s no grace among mankind. Grace is not our business.

Forgive me, dear lady. Perhaps you are right and I’ve just been talking hot air. Forget it, dear Frau Würsich. It’s not worth discussing.

Talking hot air? Listen, Grumbach, talk as much hot air as you like, but spare your fellow men yourself and your nonsense! You must seek true grace and forgiveness only from your God, sir. Helene’s mother had been regaining control of herself, and spoke those last few words with stern clarity.

I really would like to ask you, Grumbach began.

To the Fair One! And again Helene heard her mother’s laughter, the laughter with depths that a guest like this could never guess at, could never plumb, which was just as well.

Helene’s mother offered the guest the remains of her cigarette.

So now, sir, take this outside with you. You’d like to ask me? No beggars here, no hawkers, no itinerant musicians… you’ll forgive me.

From her safe retreat in the darkness above, Helene saw the guest nod. He took the glowing cigarette, which must be burning close to his fingers. As her mother withdrew into her bedroom, coughing, and closed the door, the guest nodded. Carefully, stick and glowing cigarette in his hand, he climbed down the steep stairs. He was still nodding as he reached the front door and went out into Tuchmacherstrasse. The door latched behind him.

Helene stood up and tried to open her father’s door again. She shook it.

Let me in, it’s me.

At first all was still behind the door, but then Helene heard Martha’s light footsteps inside.

Why didn’t you open the door?

I didn’t want him to hear her.

Why not?

He’s forgotten her. Have you noticed that he hasn’t asked about her these last few weeks? I couldn’t tell him she’s living on the floor just below and simply doesn’t want to see him.

Martha took Helene’s hand and drew her over to their father’s bed.

How relaxed he looks, Helene remarked.

Martha said nothing.

Don’t you think he looks relaxed?

Martha still did not answer and Helene thought he must be glad to have a daughter like her, a nurse who not only dressed the inflamed stump of his left leg daily, but injected him with painkillers and was careful, day after day, to talk herself and him out of the fear that he might have typhoid. Their father could not keep down any fluids now, but there were several possible reasons for that, which Martha hastily listed, while Helene read medical manuals, allegedly to prepare herself for training as a nurse, in fact so as not to lose sight entirely of her wish to study medicine.

Helene sat down on the chair and, when Martha set about washing their father’s yellow foot, she took the top book off the pile lying beside her. She glanced up only now and then, to suggest that her father’s steadily rising temperature might be a symptom of typhoid after all, developing after some delay.

Martha said nothing to that. It had not escaped her that their father’s condition had deteriorated considerably. But she said: You don’t understand anything about it yet.

Over the last few weeks, Martha had shown Helene how to do everything she did. They handled their father’s body in turn as he lay there, looking so defenceless, Helene thought. There was nothing he could do but suffer his daughters’ hands on his body. They were not caressing him lovingly but exploring his body as if to find out something and as if, when they did, it would do them some good. Martha told Helene where every organ was, although Helene had known all that for a long time. Martha couldn’t help noticing how his spleen was swelling by the day; she must know what that meant.

For some time now, Martha had been unable to go to the hospital in the morning. She stayed at home, watching over her father’s life, easing it for him. Helene noticed that Martha was scraping and scrubbing herself more frequently every day. After each visit to her father’s bedside Martha scraped at her hands thoroughly, right up to the elbows; she called in the aid of the hairbrush and openly scrubbed her back with it.

At first she asked Helene to empty the bedpan with some hesitation, but then they came to take it for granted that Helene would carry the bedpans of fluids out of the room, rinse them with boiling water and clean the thermometer. Helene washed her hands and her arms up to the elbows, she scrubbed her fingers and the palms and backs of her hands with the nailbrush. It was not supposed to itch, it mustn’t itch. Cold water on her wrists, soap, plenty of soap, which had to foam into a lather. It didn’t itch, she just had to wash herself. Helene conscientiously entered the temperature from the thermometer on the curve of the chart recording it. Martha watched her.

You know what it means when the spleen swells, said Helene. Martha didn’t look at her. Helene wanted to help Martha, she wanted at least to take her father’s pulse, but Martha pushed her away from the bed and the sick man in it.

One evening the sweetish smell met Helene on her way upstairs. The stench of rotting almost took her breath away. She opened the window; the smell of damp leaves rose to her nostrils. A cool October day was drawing to its close. The wind blew through the elms. Her father wouldn’t open his one eye any more. He was breathing through his mouth, which was wide open.

Not without her. Martha was standing beside Helene. She reached for her hand, squeezed her little sister’s hand so hard that it hurt them both, and repeated what she had said. Not without her here.

Martha left the room, determined to break down the door to her mother’s bedroom by force if necessary.

This was the first time for days that Helene had been alone with her father. She carefully kept her breathing shallow and went over to his bed. His hand was heavy, the skin roughened. When Helene picked up that yellow skin in two fingers it did not drop back into place again. Helene was not surprised when, in the light of the lamp, she saw the red rash on his chest where his nightshirt opened. Her father’s hand was pleasantly warm, his temperature had risen daily by tenths of a degree until it reached forty.

From below, she heard clattering and furious shouts. No one was supposed to disturb Mother. Helene changed the sheet that they were using instead of a blanket, now that their father was so hot inside. Her glance went instinctively to the festering stump. Its sweet smell had enticed maggots out. She didn’t want to look; it was as if his wound were alive, as if death were licking its way towards it. Helene swallowed as she uncovered his genitals — they looked to her small and dried-up, as if they had withered away and just happened to be lying where they were by chance. The instrument of her conception. Helene laid her hand on her father’s forehead; she bent over him.

She didn’t even whisper the words: I love you. Her lips formed them, that was all, as she kissed his forehead.

Hoar frost, only a small one. My little pigeon. We’re not freezing any more, her father stammered. He hadn’t spoken for weeks. She hardly recognized his voice, but it must be his. Helene stayed with him, she touched his forehead with her lips and stayed there. Her head suddenly felt so heavy that she wanted to lay her face on her father’s. She knew that her father had always called her mother his little pigeon.

The body is only a disguise, her father whispered. That’s all, and invisible. It’s warm inside the house, come in to me, little pigeon, no one can find us, no one can scare us. Father put his hands to his ears and held them there. Stay with me, my words, don’t run out. My pigeon is coming, my little pigeon is coming.

For a moment Helene was ashamed; she had heard the words spoken to her mother, or at least meant for her mother, and would be keeping them to herself.

Only when the shivering began did Helene stand up. She caressed her father’s head. Countless numbers of his hairs, grown long now, stuck to her hand. So many hairs sticking to Helene’s hand. Full of surprise, she wondered how he could still have any left on his head. What had begun as shivering became more violent; her father’s body was shaking, spittle flowed from the corner of his mouth. Helene expected him to turn blue as she had seen him do a few days ago. She said: It’s me, Helene.

But through his shivering, his words sounded unnaturally clear. Such a sweet smile, you have. We two together. Only the shells explode and give us away, they’re so loud and we are so soft. Too soft. It’s spurting, take care!

Helene took a step back to avoid her father’s fist as it lashed out.

Father, would you like something to drink?

A legbone, a legbone, a legbone dancing on its own. Her father laughed and with his laughter the shivering died down. Ripples moving away from their point of origin. Helene was not sure whether he was talking about his lost leg.

Something to drink?

Suddenly her father’s hand shot out, unexpectedly strong, to seize Helene and hold her firmly by the wrist.

Helene was alarmed. She turned, but there was no sign of Martha coming back. Indistinct sounds from the floor below showed that she and Mariechen had managed to get into the room, that was all. Helene twisted out of her father’s grasp, and next moment he seemed to fall asleep. She took the carafe of water from the bedside table and poured some of it into the little bottle that Martha had been using for the last few days to get liquid into her father’s mouth.

As soon as she put the little bottle to his lips he said, still in the position of a sleeping man: Drunken women in my mouth.

He couldn’t drink, couldn’t take any more water. Helene moistened her father’s lips with her fingers. She resorted to the syringe for aid, taking out the needle and dripping water into his mouth from it.

Then she replaced the needle and filled the syringe with morphine to the lowest mark, held it up and expelled the air. Her father’s arm was covered with puncture marks, so she looked for somewhere on his neck. An abscess had formed there, but next to it she found a good place for the injection. She pressed down slowly.

Later, she must have fallen asleep at his bedside from exhaustion. Twilight was falling as she raised her head and heard her mother cursing as she approached. Obviously she was being forcibly brought upstairs. Martha’s voice was heard, loud and determined: You must see him, Mother.

The door was opened, their mother was resisting, she didn’t want to enter the room.

I won’t, Mother kept saying again and again, I won’t. She hit out. But Martha and Mariechen were having none of that; they propelled her to the door and then, now that she was clinging firmly to them both, hauled her over to Father’s bed with all their strength.

There was a moment’s silence. Mother stood up straight. She saw her husband, the man she hadn’t seen for six years. She closed her eyes.

Just what did he do to you? Martha asked her, breaking the silence and unable to hide her indignation. For the first time in her life, Helene heard Mariechen speaking her own Sorbian language, a soft sing-song. She was familiar with its rhythm from the women in the market place. Mariechen folded her hands, clearly in prayer.

Ignoring that, Mother groped her way towards the bed like a blind puppy, a creature that doesn’t yet know its way but is instinctively getting the hang of it. She took hold of Father’s sheet and bent over the sick man. When he opened his sound eye, she whispered, with a tenderness that frightened Helene: Just say you’re still alive.

Her head sank on Father’s chest and Helene was sure that now she would shed tears. But she stayed where she was, motionless and still.

My little pigeon, said Father, laboriously searching for words. I didn’t give you a room in my house just for you to shut yourself up in it.

Mother withdrew from him.

Yes, you did, she said quietly. All the things in my room, all the hills and valleys they make, that’s where I’m at home. Nowhere else. They are me. Who knows what care I put into laying out my paths? Clearings. Your daughters wanted to throw away the Bautzen News, tidying up they call it. They tore away the chiffon as if it wasn’t hiding anything, they took last December’s editions apart, I worked for days stacking them up again. By subject. According to subject, theme, material, putting them together, stacking them, putting them in order that way, not by the date. I’m a nocturnal creature. It’s dark in me, but never dark enough.

Helene glanced at Martha, looking across the bed and over her parents’ heads. They were so preoccupied with each other that Helene felt as if she were at the theatre. Perhaps Martha was thinking the same. Mother’s heart has gone blind, Martha had once said when Helene asked what was wrong with her. She can only see things, not people any more, that’s why she collects those old pots and pans, scarves with holes in them and common-or-garden fruit stones. You never knew when this or that might come in useful. Only the other day she’d been sewing a peach stone to her woollen cape. Mother could see a horse in a piece of bent tree root and would tie a tail of hair recently cut from one of her daughters’ heads to the back of it. She had drawn a strand of wool through the hole in an enamel dish which said SOAP on it in large letters, and tied assorted buttons and pebbles collected over the years to the strand. This soap dish now hung over her bedroom door to act as a bell, so that she would have warning, even in a drowsy state, if anyone came in. Helene remembered a walk many years ago, perhaps their last outing together before Father left for the war. Mother had gone on this walk with her family only with reluctance and after repeated requests from her husband. She had suddenly bent down, picked up a curved piece of iron from the rim of a cartwheel and cried happily: Eureka! She recognized the earth in the iron and the fire in the shape of it, picked it up, held it in the air and took it home, where she found it a new function as a shoehorn, discerning a soul in the thing. She talked a soul into it, gave it a soul, so to speak. Mother in the role of God. Everything was to have its being through her alone. Eureka: Helene often wondered about the meaning of the word. But her mother could no longer recognize her younger daughter, her heart had gone blind, as Martha said, so that she couldn’t see people any more. She could tolerate only those whom she had met before the death of her four sons.

Helene looked at her mother, who described herself as a nocturnal creature, pointing out the attention she paid to the existence of her paths and clearings, making all these confessions like a brilliant actress. Malice had become second nature to her: it was the effect that counted. But Helene could be wrong. The appearance of malice was Mother’s only possible armour, malicious words her weapons, in her triumph over what had once bound the couple together as man and wife. Something about this woman appeared to Helene so immeasurably false, concentrating as she did so mercilessly on herself, without the faintest trace of love or even a glance for her father, that she could not help hating her mother.

Father moved his mouth, struggling with a jaw that wouldn’t obey him. Then he said distinctly: I wanted to see you, my little pigeon. I’m back because of you.

You never should have gone.

There was no grief left in Mother’s voice; all the grief had frozen into certainty. Your daughters wanted to get rid of my books, but I saved a quotation for you, one of my favourites, to console me for your absence.

I’m glad you had consolation. Father’s voice was faint and free of any mockery.

It’s from Machiavelli, I expect you remember him? The first law for every creature is: Preserve yourself! Live! You sow hemlock and act as if you saw ears of corn ripening!

I’ve lost my leg, look, I’ll be staying here now. Father tried to force a smile, a kind one. An understanding, gentle smile. The kind with which he could once smooth over any disagreement between them.

It would never have been lost here, not here with me.

Father did not reply. Helene felt a strong wish to defend him; she wanted to say something to justify his leaving six years ago, but nothing occurred to her. So she said: Mother, he went to the war for all of us, he lost his leg for all our sakes.

No, said Mother, shaking her head. Not for me.

She rose to her feet.

She walked out of the door, turning back once, without a glance for Helene as she told her: And you keep out of this, child. What do you know about me and him?

Martha followed their mother to the stairs, undaunted and unimpressed.

Then her mother, whose heart had gone blind, of whom Helene knew nothing much but the orders she gave and the thoughts that cut her off from the world, went back to her dying husband, knowing that her daughters were there behind her, yet still she said: This isn’t the first time I’ve been dying.

Helene took Martha’s hand; she almost laughed. She had so often heard her mother say that! Usually it led to demands for them to do more housework, show greater respect, or run an errand; sometimes it was a mere explanation, although its intention was not easy to decipher and its purpose could keep the girls guessing for hours on end. But here at her husband’s deathbed, obviously nothing meant anything to their mother but her own emotion, the darker side of feelings that were sufficient only for herself.

Martha removed her hand from Helene’s. She took her mother by the shoulder. Can’t you see he’s the one who’s dying? Father is dying. Not you. Can’t you finally understand that this is not about your death?

It’s not? Mother looked at Martha in surprise.

No. Martha shook her head as if she had to convince her mother.

Mother’s baffled gaze suddenly fell on Helene. A smile came to her lips, as if she were setting eyes on someone she hadn’t seen for a long time. Come here, my daughter, she said to Helene.

Helene dared not move. She didn’t want to get an inch closer to her mother, not the smallest step. She would have liked to leave the room. She was avoiding not so much the threat of her mother’s imminent rejection as her touch, as if that touch might carry some kind of infection. Helene felt her old fear that some day her heart might go as blind as her mother’s. Mother’s smile, still confident a moment ago, froze. Helene had a recurrent nightmare that had tormented her for years, about two gods who looked like Apollo in the engraving hanging over the shelf for paper in the sales room of the printing works. The two gods who resembled Apollo were arguing, each claiming his sole right at the top of his voice: Me, me! I am the Lord thy God, they both cried at the same time. And everything went dark around Helene. So dark that she couldn’t see anything any more. In this dream she groped her way forward, she felt something slippery as slugs, felt heat, fire and finally she fell into a void. Before she could hit the bottom of the abyss, she always woke up with her heart racing, pressed her nose to Martha’s back as her sister lay breathing regularly, and while her nightdress stuck to her back, cold and clammy, she prayed to God to free her from the nightmare. But God was obviously angry. The nightmare came back again. Perhaps his feelings were hurt, and Helene knew why: he guessed that she was thinking of him in a certain shape, as the figure of a stately Apollo, and not only that, she saw him double, she saw his brother, and while she prayed to one she turned her back on the other — and in the end her prayer itself left no god any choice but anger.

Next moment, as she stood there frozen rigid, when it had become clear that she would not and could not do as her mother asked, she remembered how her mother had talked, years ago on the Protschenberg, about her God and Father’s God, as if their faiths were rivals. When Mother described human beings as earthworms, Helene took it as an expression of the hatred that Mother had always tried imparting to her, and it bore fruit when Helene dreamed of slugs and fell into a void that appeared to her like her mother’s womb.

Helene wanted to wash, wash her hands up to the elbows, her neck, her hair. She must wash everything. Her thoughts were going round and round. She turned away and stumbled down the stairs. She heard Mariechen calling after her, she heard Martha calling her name, but she couldn’t think, couldn’t stop, she had to run. She opened the front door of the house and ran up Tuchmacherstrasse and over the Lauengraben to the bridge, to Kronprinzenbrücke. Then she made her way further, on tiptoe in the dark, below the Bürgergarten and down the slope of the bank to the River Spree. Sometimes she could cling to the stout foundations of the bridge with her hands, sometimes she held on to trees and bushes. She went along the lower road to the Lattenzaun, past the Hop Flower restaurant, where there was still lively company and loud dance music. People wanted to be done with the war and silence and defeat at last. Only when she came to the weir, and heard nothing in the darkness but the gurgling and rushing of the river, was she able to stop. Crouching down, she held her hands in the icy water. Mist hung low over the river, and Helene listened to her breath as it calmed down.

It was late when the music from the restaurant had stopped, and her clothes were damp and cold from the night air and the river, and she went home. On tiptoe, she went up to her dark bedroom, felt around for Martha and slipped into bed with her under the blanket. Martha put an arm over her and a leg, her long, heavy leg, and under it Helene felt safe.

Helene stood at the window, scratching away the leaves of the frost flowers with her fingernail. A fine layer of ice, still smooth, the frosty white shavings. Small heaps, tiny crystals. Father is dead. Martha had told her this morning. Helene tried out the words singly, for their meaning. You shouldn’t contradict yourself, but how did dead and the verbs to be or to have go together? He had no life any more — so the person who could call something his own was still somehow there. How did such a life want to be, to possess itself? She wondered why Martha hadn’t woken her in the night so that she too could have held her father’s hand. Martha had been alone with him.

What was it like?

What?

How did he die?

You saw him, didn’t you, little angel?

But the last breath. What came after that?

Nothing. Martha looked at Helene, eyes wide open. Unblinking eyes trying to say they couldn’t tell a lie. Helene knew that Martha wouldn’t tell her any more about it, even if there was anything else to know. She’d keep it to herself. So nothing came after that. Helene breathed on the frost flowers, touched the jagged blooms with her lips. Her lips stuck to the ice and burned. Skin came off, the delicate skin of her lips. Martha will have folded his hands, drawn the sheet over his face and turned the bed to the window so that his soul could look out at God. Her lips felt sore.

Helene would have liked it if Martha had woken her. Perhaps he wouldn’t have died if she had been holding his hand. At least not like that, so simply, not without her.

Candles were burning in every room in the house; day refused to begin. The clouds lay low and heavy over the rooftops, they hung between the walls, night was still swaying back and forth in the clouds above.

We’ll wait for the pastor, said Martha, sitting down on the stairs.

You wait. I’m going upstairs to read my book, replied Helene. She went up, but not to the room they shared, where her familiar friends were waiting, Young Werther and the Marquise of O, whose fainting fit Helene still thought extraordinary and incredible. She went up yet another floor. Overnight it had turned cold in here. No one had lit the small stove this morning. She went over to the bed and saw his nose poking up under the sheet. She wondered what he looked like now, but no picture would form before her eyes. Even the memory of how he had looked when he was still alive failed her; yesterday she had tried to get a little water down him and he wouldn’t open his mouth, not even a crack, she could find no trace of memory in herself of the way he’d looked yesterday. There had been hairs left all over the pillow, his long, ashen and finally yellowish hairs. She had plucked his hair off the pillow and held it in her hand for a long time, not knowing where to put it. Could she throw away her dying father’s hair? She could. She had taken his hair into the little closet in the yard and was going to drop it down the frozen hole in the ground there. The hair wouldn’t just drop in. It hadn’t wanted to leave her hand. Even in the closet she’d had to pluck it off her hands, hair by hair. And it had not fallen, it floated in the air so slowly that she felt revulsion and didn’t want to watch. Helene remembered that, remembered his hair yesterday, but not how he himself had looked. The sheet was white, that was all. Helene lifted it, first tentatively, then all the way off, and looked at her father. The skin over his eye socket shone, spotlessly smooth. He had a bandage round his head, to keep his jaw closed before rigor mortis set in. Helene was surprised to see his skin still shining, his face still gleaming. She touched his cheek with the back of her hand. The nothingness there was only slightly cool.

She put the sheet over him again and left the room on tiptoe. She didn’t want her mother in the room below to hear her footsteps, she mustn’t hear and know that Helene had been with him. Helene climbed downstairs again and stood by the window. She took a deep breath and puffed a hole in the frost flowers. Helene could see through the hole as the pastor, walking by, came down from the Kornmarkt, keeping close to the sooty walls of the houses, crossed to the other side of the street and came over to their house. He stopped. He looked for something in the skirts of his long coat, found a handkerchief and blew his nose. Then he rang the bell.

Martha offered the pastor tea. They spoke softly, and Helene could hardly hear them. The bell rang once and Mariechen opened the door to six black-clad gentlemen. Helene recognized one of them as Mayor Koban, who hadn’t once visited his friend’s sickbed, and another as Grumbach, but he was too shy to raise his eyes and meet hers. A carriage and pair stood waiting outside the door. The horses wore blankets to keep out the cold. They were snorting, and their breath looked like the vapour from a small steam engine. The six gentlemen carried the coffin upstairs, and a little later they carried it down again.

We must go, the people are waiting at the graveyard, they’ll be freezing, the chapel lost its stove as well as its bell in the war, said the pastor, adding: Is your esteemed mother ready to set out?

Only now did Helene prick up her ears.

No, said Martha. She won’t be coming.

She won’t be…? The pastor looked blankly from Martha to Helene and finally back to Martha, who cast down her eyes.

No, said Helene, she doesn’t want to.

She says she’s tired, Martha explained, her voice sounding curiously weak.

Tired! The pastor’s mouth dropped open. Helene liked his Rhineland accent; he had been in this parish only two years. And she liked his sermons; she thought that in his language she heard something of the wide world, something that rose far above the world of the God of which he spoke.

Martha firmly took her coat. The pastor stayed sitting where he was. But on the last journey to the grave, he objected and fell silent. Where were his words about disobedience now?

We should go and let her do as she wants, Martha told the pastor sternly.

No, faltered the pastor. We can’t go without her, without his wife, without your esteemed mother. I will speak to her. May I? The pastor rose, hoping that Martha would take him to the lady of the house. But Martha barred his way.

Believe me, it’s no use. Martha was already smoothing her hair down, ready to set out.

Please. The pastor was not giving way. He showed clearly that he was not abandoning the attempt.

As you like. But you said yourself that people are waiting at the graveyard.

Martha nodded to Mariechen, indicating that she could show the pastor the way up to their mother’s room.

Is Leontine coming? Helene put on her coat and saw Martha blushing.

The girls heard the clink of the pebbles and buttons in the bell their mother had made for her room coming from up above. Then there was unaccustomed silence, no shouting, no banging. Martha’s blush left red marks on her face and down to her throat. She looked unhappy.

What’s the matter? Have you two quarrelled?

What gives you that idea? Martha was indignant. She quietly added: Leontine’s been prevented from coming.

The pastor and Mariechen came down the stairs. Mariechen put on her coat and opened the door.

Mother didn’t want to come, am I right? Helene looked searchingly at the pastor.

We won’t force her. Everyone must find his own way to God.

Not her. Don’t you know she’s Jewish?

The Jews too will stand before God some day. The pastor spoke devoutly and with stern but inescapable kindness. He seemed to feel so certain of his faith that Helene had to respect him.

Martha had booked a table in the Town Hall cellar for the funeral meal. None of the black-clad gentlemen said a word. They kept quiet and drank. Mariechen was crying quietly. And as the pastor kept quoting from the Book of Job, Helene wanted to close her ears in spite of his pleasant voice. She put her foot out to Martha under the table, gently touching Martha’s calf, but Martha did not respond by giving any sign, however small.

And so you see, Fräulein Martha, God takes to him those whom he loves best. And he gives joy and love to all who still have their path to tread through this life. We have only to look around in our own community. Fräulein Leontine is a good friend of yours, is she not? You see, her engagement to be married is the beginning of a new path, the path of her children and her happiness.

The familiar chord of A major rang out from St Peter’s Cathedral. The pealing bells seemed to be agreeing with the pastor.

Engagement to be married? Helene was astonished. Had her question been drowned out by the sound of the bells?

Martha was crying now, sobbing uncontrollably.

Fräulein Leontine is getting married in Berlin. Mariechen smiled at the gentlemen present with a certain pride, or perhaps just pleasure, dried her tears and patted Helene’s arm. No doubt she was relieved to think that a young lady who presented such difficulties as Leontine was to have a husband after all. Obviously Helene was the only person at the table who hadn’t known about Leontine’s engagement.

Did you know? Helene leaned forward, hoping Martha would look at her. But Martha wasn’t looking at anyone, she just nodded almost imperceptibly.

Even if you do not care to think of such things at this moment, Fräulein Martha, God the Father will provide for you too. You will marry and bear sons. Life, my dear child, has so much waiting for you.

So much? Martha blew her nose. Do you understand God, do you understand why he allows us to suffer?

The pastor smiled indulgently, as if he had expected Martha to ask this question. Your father’s death is sent as a trial. God means well by you, Martha, you know that. It is not a case of understanding, my dear child, facing the trial is what counts. When the pastor put his hand out over the table to place it consolingly on Martha’s, she jumped up.

Please excuse me. I ought to go and see to Mother.

Martha ran up the stairs from the Town Hall cellar and left. There was nothing Helene could do but remain seated at the table, although she guessed that Martha had simply been looking for a good excuse to run away.

She loved her father very much, said Grumbach, raising his voice in this company for the first time. The other men nodded and amidst the general assent he added grimly: She loved him too much.

God’s love is great. A daughter cannot love her father too much. She can learn to love and give only from God. Martha will withstand this trial, we do not for a moment doubt that. The pastor believed what he said and knew the effect his words would have. The gentlemen nodded.

Both his children loved him, both of them. Mariechen was still patting Helene’s arm.

When the funeral meal was over, Helene sent Mariechen to see her women friends ostensibly to buy yarn for new lace, but really so that she could return to Tuchmacherstrasse alone. All was still in the house. Helene knocked at her mother’s door once, twice, and when there was no answer she opened it.

Has Martha been here?

Her mother was lying in bed, her eyes wide open, and stared at Helene. You two are always looking for each other. Don’t you have anything better to do?

We’ve just buried Father.

Her mother said nothing, so Helene repeated it: We’ve just buried Father.

Oh.

Helene waited, hoping Mother would think of a few more words to say, even a whole sentence.

What is it? Why are you hovering in the doorway like that? Martha isn’t here, surely you can see that.

Helene went downstairs and out of the back door. Frost still lay on the black trees and foliage. It looked as if day could not break fully, as if it would be morning for ever, now, a November morning although it was early in the afternoon. Helene went into the garden and trudged over to the outside closet, with the dead leaves crumbling underfoot. The door was bolted.

Are you in there? Helene knocked hesitantly at the door. She heard rustling inside and finally Martha opened it.

It’s all right. Martha pushed her hair back from her face, suddenly radiant.

Is it? Helene saw Martha’s glazed eyes. She didn’t want to hear any lies.

Yes, everything’s all right! Martha took a deep breath and spread her arms. Helene clasped Martha round the waist. Oh, not so stormy, little one! Martha laughed out loud. Don’t forget, we’re out of doors, everyone can see us!

Oh, Martha, you’re dreadful. Helene smiled, she was ashamed of herself, for all she had been thinking of was comfort. She wanted to comfort Martha, she wanted to know everything about Leontine and Martha, yet she had firmly resolved to ask no questions.

Shall we go upstairs? Martha gave Helene a lustful glance.

Helene couldn’t say no, but she did say: I only wanted to comfort you.

Yes, you do that, comfort me! Martha was breathing audibly and deeply again, in and out. Under her thick coat she wore her new black dress with its high collar. Mariechen had made it specially for the funeral. Its black was a pretty contrast with Martha’s white skin. Her cheeks and her large, delicate nose were reddened by the cold. Her glazed eyes looked brighter than usual. Comfort me!

Helene tried to take Martha’s hand, but Martha snatched it away. She was holding something in that hand, something that now disappeared into her coat pocket.

The sisters went upstairs and closed the door of their room. They dropped on to the bed that they shared and undressed. Helene returned Martha’s kisses, receiving every one of them as if it were meant for her, as if they were not both thinking of Leontine.

My breasts aren’t getting any bigger, Helene whispered later in the blue twilight.

Never mind, said Martha, they’re getting prettier. Isn’t that something?

Helene bit her tongue. Martha could have said that Helene had only to wait another two or three years, after all, and time allowed her to hope, but her kindly answer showed Helene how difficult it was for Martha to pay attention to her sister today. Yet Helene too was thinking mainly of Leontine and her engagement to a man in Berlin. Perhaps Leontine had written Martha a letter, and Martha had been reading it in secret in the closet and put it in her coat pocket before she could take Helene’s hand. A goodbye letter to explain where this fiancé of hers had come from all of a sudden, and why she was going away after all, in spite of her previous promises. Helene wondered what would become of Martha now. But Martha obviously didn’t want to talk about Leontine.

I’m thirsty, said Martha.

Helene got up. She took the water jug off the washstand, poured some water into a mug and handed it to Martha.

Lie down on me, little angel, come on.

Helene shook her head. She sat on the edge of the bed and stroked Martha’s arm.

Please.

Helene shook her head again.

Then I’ll go downstairs. I think I heard Mariechen just now. I’ll help her with supper. Martha stood up, fastened her woollen stockings and put on the black dress.

As soon as Martha had gone out of the door and her footsteps had died away on the stairs, Helene reached out to pick up the coat lying on the floor. She did not find a letter in the pocket, but a handkerchief wrapped round a syringe. A memento of their father? Helene’s thoughts were all in disorder. Why would Martha hide their father’s syringe? Helene found tiny drops of blood on the handkerchief. She quickly rewrapped the syringe in the handkerchief, and the handkerchief fell open once more. Helene rolled it all up together and put the little bundle back where she had found it — why was it in her sister’s coat pocket; why did she go into the closet with that syringe and not with a letter from Leontine?