The Blind Side of the Heart

NO FINER MOMENT

In the winter after the death of the girls’ father the Spree froze over from its banks, until in January the ice floes were so close together that the boys of Bautzen tested their daring by crossing the river on them. To Helene, the spectacle was evidence of biblical truth. Couldn’t water freeze even in the desert, and wasn’t Jesus walking on water historical evidence of that fact? Smoke rose from chimneys early in the morning, clouds of it enveloping the town where it stood on its granite rock. Only the tip of the Lauenturm, the Cathedral of St Peter and the leaning Reichenturm, visible from afar, emerged from the mists of Bautzen in the morning hours. Even the high walls of the Ortenburg and the Alte Wasserkunst, the Old Water Tower, were lost in the vapours. Most households ran out of firewood at the end of January, and where money was short and coal deliveries slow people chopped up small items of furniture, stools and benches, garden furniture that seemed useless to them in midwinter. Martha and Helene saw their cash running out. If they managed to sell a calendar or a picture postcard, the money was spent right away. Bread had never been as expensive as it would be tomorrow. They tried to find someone to lease the printing works, but nothing came of all their advertising and enquiries. The factories down by the river were laying off workers, and anyone who could leave went to Breslau, Dresden or Leipzig. Any big city offered better chances of finding food and heated accommodation.

Helene cleared the stockrooms and the office shelves. Thick dust lay on the upper shelves, along with a number of small composition patterns for type that no one would be needing now. Helene had kept paper in the lower compartments in past years, but much of it had found its way into the stove these last few weeks. The brief warmth as it burned was better than no warmth at all. The long planks forming the top shelves would be sure to give a good heat and there’d be no need to take all the shelving apart. Helene planned to use only the wood from those two planks at the top, which were firmly anchored in their supports. The shelving covered the whole long wall of the room from floor to ceiling, then ran from the far corner to the door and beyond. There would still be plenty of space without the top shelves. Helene climbed the ladder with a hammer in her hand. A piece of cardboard had slipped behind one shelf and was stuck there between the plank, the wall and the support. Helene leaned forward, held on to a shelf with one hand and tried to pull the cardboard out. Then she intended to knock the top shelf right out of its anchoring. The cardboard was still stuck. Helene groped her way along the wall and was trying to free one corner of it from the supporting post when she was aware of something metallic moving. She felt behind the outer support for the object, pulled it out and found that she was holding a key. It was a little rusty, but Helene knew at once what it was. She was familiar with its shape and the unusual ornamentation of its head, even with its weight, yet she had never held it in her hand before. It looked a little smaller, as if it had shrunk. Helene well remembered how, before the war, her father used to clear the till at the end of the day, take the key and go into the back room with the money in his hands. Then he opened the large cupboard. Although Helene might already be turning to the door when he opened the till, he winked at her every evening with the eye that would be missing later and said: You stand guard at the doorway, will you? And if anyone comes, just whistle. Sometimes Helene said: Girls aren’t supposed to whistle. Then he would smile and reply: Oh, are you a girl, then? And once, half hidden by the open cupboard door, he chanted the lines he had written in her album: Sweet as the violet be, /virtuous, modest and pure, /not like the rose whom we see/flaunting her full-blown allure. Then he changed his tone of voice, adjuring her almost menacingly: But all girls must know how to whistle, just you remember that.

Helene knew that the door to the safe was in the back wall of that cupboard. In all the years of her father’s absence the key had not turned up, and after his return there had been no opportunity to ask him about it. Helene loved her father and, in the old days, when he stroked her hair and drew her head towards him as if it were the head of his big dog, she wouldn’t for anything have endangered that sense of security; she would keep still until he sent her out to the kitchen or into the street with a kindly little tap on the behind. All the same, Helene didn’t care for those lines about the violet. She liked the sweet scent of violets and their delicate appearance, but she admired the upright growth of roses at least as much, the thorns they grew to protect themselves and their bright colours, pink unfolding like dawn, yellow like late October sunlight. In particular she loved the old song about the Virgin Mary walking through a wood of thorns, which all burst into flower and bear roses. Leontine had taught it to them before she went to Berlin. Weren’t those thorns showing Mary how much they respected and even worshipped her by flowering? Everything about the rose seemed to Helene admirable, even enviable. Out of respect for her father she made an attempt to like the allegory of girls seen as flowers, but it was only an attempt and went no further. Since last year Helene had been growing roses, not violets, in the garden outside the house. They were not really garden flowers but wild roses that she had found and dug up on the slopes of the Schafberg.

Now, when Helene and Martha opened the safe for the first time, they found old banknotes arranged in several wads, amounting in all to a good two thousand marks, which made them laugh. To think what they could have bought with that years ago! Now it might buy a whole loaf, or anyway half a loaf. At least half a pound of bread. Two thousand loaves back then, claimed Martha. They discovered a leather address book with the cut edges of the pages gilded, and a folder containing lithographs of various sizes and, judging by the typography, of different origins, arranged in no particular order. The lithographs were pictures of women with nothing or very little on. Curvaceous women, very unlike the sisters themselves and their mother. Women in just their stockings, women with veils and tight-fitting basques, as well as women wearing nothing whatsoever.

The sisters set to work to write the names and addresses from the leather book on envelopes. They put a death announcement for their father in each envelope. Under ‘S’ they found the name of an aunt or maybe cousin they had never heard of before. It said: Fanny Steinitz. Under the name their father had written, in the fine script of a meticulous bookkeeper, a note in brackets: (Selma’s cousin, the daughter of Hugo Steinitz’s late brother). The address for Fanny Steinitz was number 21 Achenbachstrasse, W 50, Wilmersdorf, Berlin.

Even before Helene managed to catch her mother at a moment of mental clarity during the next week and took the opportunity of asking about her cousin who lived in Berlin, she wrote a short letter on her own initiative. Dear Aunt, she began, unfortunately we are sending you sad news today. Our father, your cousin Selma Würsich’s husband, died on 11 November last year from the consequences of his war wounds. You will find our death announcement enclosed. Helene wondered whether, and in what words, to mention and explain her mother’s condition. After all, the cousin would be surprised to get a letter from her nieces, not her cousin in person. She added: I am sure our mother would send you her best wishes, but sad to say she has been in very poor heath for the last few years. With our very best wishes, your nieces Martha and Helene Würsich.

Helene could not be sure whether their aunt still lived at the same address. Wouldn’t she have married some time over the past years, in which case her surname would not be the same today? Their aunt might well be surprised to find them getting in touch after such a long time — moreover, there must be some reason for the absence of any mention of this maternal cousin of theirs in the family stories they had been told. But Helene wanted to write this letter. Her curiosity and her hope of receiving an answer from Berlin outweighed her doubts, and she quickly dismissed them all.

It was Easter before the postman brought a strangely narrow, folded envelope addressed to Fräulein Helene Würsich. Their aunt wrote in a bold hand, the letters leaning far to the right, the upper loops of the ‘H’ in Helene’s name just touching the finely traced letter ‘e’. This, wrote Aunt Fanny, was a wonderful surprise! After that exclamatory opening she left two lines blank. It was a long time since she’d heard anything of that crazy cousin of hers. She was delighted to hear that two children had obviously arrived over the years, for they had not been in touch since the birth of the first child, Martha. She had always wondered whether her cousin had broken off contact with her because of their old quarrels, or might even have died in childbirth. In a postscript Aunt Fanny asked her nieces whether their mother was seriously ill.

A correspondence began. There was little to say about their mother, Helene replied, she hadn’t been well for years and it was unlikely that any doctor could help her. She consulted Martha about the best way to describe their mother’s condition. To say she was in poor health did not mean much, particularly as there was nothing organically wrong with her. They remembered Lady Midday, the Noonday Witch whom Mariechen mentioned now and then, saying with a curious smile that her lady, as she called the girls’ mother, just wouldn’t speak to the spirit who appears in the harvest fields at noon and can confuse your mind or even kill you, unless you hold her attention for an hour by talking about flax. There was nothing to be done about it, said Mariechen, shrugging her shoulders, although all her lady had to do was talk to the Noonday Witch for an hour about the working of flax, that was all. Mariechen’s eyes twinkled. Just passing on a little wisdom, she told the girls. Martha and Helene had known the tale of the Noonday Witch as long as they could remember; there was something comforting about it, because it suggested that their mother’s confused state of mind was merely a curse that could easily be lifted. Nothing to be done about it, however, Mariechen repeated, shrugging again, and her smile showed she was sure of the spirit’s powers and felt only a tiny scrap of sympathy for her disbelieving mistress. On the other hand, as things were Mariechen had her lady to herself, along with her beliefs. Her lady couldn’t run away. But Martha and Helene did not write to their aunt in Berlin about the Noonday Witch; they did not want Fanny Steinitz thinking of them in connection with rustic superstition and supposing that they must be simple-minded. So they merely gave a factual account of some malady that no one could explain: it was hard to pin down any cause for their mother’s mental anguish and it seemed impossible to treat it.

Ah, well, that wouldn’t surprise her, Aunt Fanny wrote back. Such disorders ran in the family; and in that case, she asked, who was looking after the girls now?

They looked after themselves, Martha said proudly and she asked Helene to put that in her next letter. Both of them did. And she told Helene to tell their aunt that after just two years of training, and although she was the youngest of the student nurses, she, Helene, was going to take her examination in September. She should say that she was already helping in the hospital laundry and earning a little money there, so the two of them had enough to live on in a modest way. So far what remained of the family fortune had just been able to provide for their mother, the household and their faithful maid Mariechen.

Helene hesitated. Wouldn’t it be better to say what little remained of the family fortune?

Why? A fortune can’t be little, my angel.

But it’s all gone now.

Does she have to know that? We’re not beggars.

Helene didn’t want to contradict Martha. She liked the invincibility of her sister’s pride. She went on writing: So far we haven’t found anyone to lease the printing works, but we can probably sell some of the machinery. We’ll have to sell the Monopol press too, since our money is running out as the currency loses value and we have had no news of our legacy from Breslau. Did Aunt Fanny know anything about her late uncle the hat maker Herbert Steinitz, and the big salon he was said to have opened on the Ring in Breslau?

Ah, yes, the hat maker, Aunt Fanny wrote back. Her well-heeled uncle had liked only one person in the world, and that was her strange cousin Selma. She was sure he had left everything to Cousin Selma. Herself, she had never really cultivated the acquaintance of her Uncle Herbert. Perhaps she ought to make up for that now, after the event? The fact was that her uncle’s reputation depended solely on his fortune. She could ask her brothers about him; one of them still lived in Gleiwitz, the other in Breslau.

It was to be autumn before Martha and Helene received the legacy left to their mother. It consisted of the regular income from the rents of an apartment block with business premises on the ground floor that Fanny’s uncle had had built in Breslau, some securities that were worth hardly anything now and finally a large, brand-new wardrobe trunk that came by cart on one of the first cool days of late September.

The carrier said the trunk weighed so little that he’d be willing to carry it upstairs by himself.

It was lucky that Mother was in her bedroom and didn’t see the trunk. Martha and Helene waited until Mariechen had gone to her own little room that evening, then broke open the lead seals with a knife and a hammer. A scent of thyme and southern softwoods rose to their nostrils. The trunk contained a large number of unusual hats packed in tissue paper, lavishly trimmed with feathers and coloured stones, and inside them square wooden hat blocks that gave off a resinous aroma. The blocks were planed smooth but were sticky at the sides. Each hat had a flat little bag of yellow hemp on it, filled with dried herbs, probably to keep moths away. Among the hats were two curious small round ones that looked like pots and fitted closely on Martha’s and Helene’s heads. At the bottom of the trunk, wrapped in heavy moss-green velvet, lay a menorah and a peculiar fish. The fish was made of horn in two different colours, adorned with carving, and the two sections fitted ingeniously together. Its eye sockets, pale horn set in horn of a darker hue, might once have held jewels, or at least so Martha thought. Inside the hollow horn body Helene found a rolled-up paper. The will. I bequeath all my property to my dear niece Selma Steinitz, married name Würsich, now resident in Bautzen. Uncle Herbert had signed his will. Further inside the belly of the fish was a thin gold necklace with tiny deep-red translucent stones. Rubies, Martha surmised. Helene wondered how Martha came to know anything about precious stones. Instinctively she let the stones slip through her hand and counted them. Twenty-two.

We’ll keep the fish here in the glass-topped display cabinet, said Martha, taking the fish from Helene’s hands and opening the cabinet. She put the fish in one of the lower compartments where it couldn’t be seen from outside. It was tacitly agreed that Helene and Martha would not ask their mother what to do with the fish. If she said they should keep it, that might mean for as long as she lived. They told her nothing about the fish and they hid the two modern cloche-shaped hats in their wardrobes.

When Martha finally, with Helene’s assistance, pushed the wardrobe trunk containing the other hats, the will and the menorah into their mother’s darkened bedroom one morning, then carried it, stepping cautiously, from clearing to clearing, because there was no space for the big trunk on the floor, she looked up in alarm. Like a frightened animal, she watched her daughters’ movements. They lifted the trunk over a pile of fabrics and clothes, over two little tables full of vases and twigs, caskets and stones, and countless other items unidentifiable at first glance, raised it in the air and finally put it down at the foot of Mother’s bed. Martha opened the trunk.

From your uncle the hat maker in Breslau, she said, holding up two large hats heavily trimmed with paste gems, stones and beads.

Uncle Herbert in Breslau, Helene confirmed.

Their mother nodded so eagerly, then glanced at the door, the window and back to Helene again with such a hunted look, that the girls didn’t know if she had understood them.

Don’t open the curtains, Mother snapped at Helene. She snorted with derision as Helene put the menorah on the windowsill beside her smaller candleholder. Candles had last burned in Mother’s menorah on the day of her husband’s death. She had lit only six of them, and when Helene asked why her mother had left out the middle candle she had whispered in a toneless voice that there was no Here any more, hadn’t her child noticed that? Helene opened the window as she suddenly heard a chuckle behind her. Her mother was struggling to catch her breath; something evidently seemed to her incredibly funny.

Mother? Helene tried just speaking to her at first; after all, there were days when a question could be asked to no purpose whatsoever. Her mother chuckled again. Mother?

Suddenly her mother fell silent. Well, who else? she asked, and broke out laughing once more.

Martha, on her way downstairs, called out to Helene. But when Helene reached the doorway her mother spoke again.

Do you think I don’t know why you were opening the window? Whenever you come into my room you open it, unasked.

I just wanted to…

You don’t think, child. I suppose your idea is that my room stinks? Is that what you want to show me? I stink, do I? Shall I tell you something, stupid girl? Old age comes, it will come to you too and it rots you away. Mother raised herself in her bed, rocking on her knees, looking as if she might tip forward and off the bedhead first. And she was laughing, the laughter was burbling out of her throat, physically hurting Helene. I’ll tell you a secret. If you don’t come into the room it doesn’t stink. Simple, eh? Mother’s laughter was not malicious now, just carefree, relieved. Helene stood there undecided. She was trying to make sense of the words. What’s the matter? Off you go, or do you want to leave me stinking, you pitiless girl?

Helene went away.

And close the door behind you! she heard her mother calling after her.

Helene closed the door. She put her hand on the banisters as she went downstairs. How familiar they seemed to her; she felt almost happy to think of these banisters leading her so safely down to the ground floor.

Downstairs, Helene found Martha sitting in their father’s armchair. She was helping Mariechen to mend sheets.

Helene and Martha thanked Aunt Fanny for her help over the legacy in a long letter full of detailed accounts of the weather and descriptions of their everyday life in the town of Bautzen. They told her that they had made a second sowing of winter salad greens in the garden behind the house and next day it would be time to sow overwintering cabbage varieties. No one would expect a flower garden to be kept going in times like these, but they did it for love. Although the water rates were rising in an alarming way, they had managed to keep the flower bed in front of the house from drying up all summer. Late summer meant a lot of outdoor work. Now Helene had cut off all the rose leaves and burned them. They had made a copper brew to spray the roses against rust, and a lime and sulphur brew to ward off mildew. The Michaelmas daisies were in full flower. They just weren’t sure when to put in flowering bulbs: Mariechen said now was the time to plant scilla and daffodils, tulips and hyacinths, but last year they had planted those bulbs early and they had frozen during the winter. They liked spinach and lamb’s lettuce very much, and had sown plenty for the winter, for no one could say when the general situation would improve. Last year, after all, they had printed small calendars for the coming year on a little press that had been standing idle in the workshop, fully operational but covered up, and now they were colouring them in by hand in the evenings. They hoped very much that the calendars would sell at the autumn fairs, or at the latest at the Christmas fair in winter. Thank goodness, they wrote, the Christmas market was reserved for local traders, or the hill farmers would force down prices. People had to look out for themselves these days. Only yesterday they had designed a little calendar with texts quoting rustic lore and maxims giving good advice. The provincials here liked to be exhorted to be virtuous in the sight of God, and it increasingly seemed to Helene, she added, that agreement on such matters was what created a sense of community here in Lusatia, bringing consolation and giving courage. And what could be more important these days than confidence and hope? What, for instance, did her aunt think of such precepts as: moderation and hard work are the best doctors; work sharpens the appetite and moderation prevents its wrongful satisfaction? People so often confuse education and good conduct with etiquette and will forgive a boy’s prank more easily than anything offending against the usual forms of social intercourse. The surest way to spoil a young man is to lead him to value those who think as he does more highly than those who think otherwise. A resolution cannot be more certainly thwarted than by being frequently uttered.

These reflections appeared to Helene and Martha like the yearning of their own graceful souls for the heaven of Berlin, and they hoped for nothing more fervently than to touch their aunt’s heart by writing in such terms. True education enables you to set the right tone with anyone, striking a note that chimes harmoniously with your own, don’t you agree, dear Aunt Fanny? And you are a sacred example to us there.

Helene and Martha went to great pains to show their aunt, line by line, how cheerfully independent they were and at the same time how grateful to her. Their very existence was a real joy! Helene thought this assertion too fine not to be written down. Martha, however, felt that such an expression was a demeaning lie in view of the sheer exhaustion that came over her when she thought of her life in Bautzen. Adopting a tone that trod the narrow line between pride and modesty appeared to them the real challenge of the letter they were writing. Time and again sentences were crossed out and rephrased.

Sacred example, said Martha doubtfully, she might take that the wrong way.

How do you mean, the wrong way?

She might think we’re making fun of her. Maybe she sees herself as anything but sacred, so she wouldn’t want to be a sacred example.

You think not? Helene looked enquiringly at Martha. Well, in that case at least she’ll have a good laugh. We really must put that in or we’ll never meet her at all.

Martha shook her head thoughtfully.

It was hours before they could get down to the fair copy, which had to be written out by Helene, because Martha’s handwriting often looked unsteady and crooked these days. Something wrong with her eyes, Martha claimed, but Helene didn’t believe her. She put in the bit about the sacred example and finally, in the last sentence of all, she politely asked their aunt if she would like to visit them in Bautzen some day.

When days passed, then a week, then two weeks and no answer came Helene began to worry.

There was nothing at all the matter with Martha’s eyes. If they went for a walk and Helene pointed out a dog a long way off, a sandy-coloured dog like their father’s old Baldo, who had disappeared on the day when he went away to the war, or if she showed her a tiny flower by the roadside, Martha had no difficulty in making out in detail both dog and flower. Helene suspected that her untidy handwriting, like her sudden dreamy moods, was to do with the syringe she had sometimes seen these last few months lying beside the washbasin, where Martha had obviously left it. Often as Helene handled syringes herself at the hospital now, the sight of one on their washstand at home made her throat tighten. Everything in Helene protested against the sight of that syringe when she didn’t want to see it. The first few times she was so shocked and ashamed on Martha’s behalf that she wanted to hide it before Mariechen found it, or Martha herself noticed her carelessness. But if she hid it that was sure to be noticed and would make it impossible for them to go on saying nothing about it.

As time went on, Helene became used to the idea that Martha had formed the habit of using the syringe every day. She did not speak directly to her about it. Nor could she honestly have asked questions, since she knew perfectly well that since their father’s death and Leontine’s departure Martha had been injecting small quantities of drugs now and then, presumably morphine, perhaps cocaine.

In the time just after her father’s death it was Aunt Fanny’s letters more than anything else that kept Helene hoping for a life beyond the town of Bautzen, a life she did not yet know. Even the pictures of Berlin that she had seen made her wax enthusiastic about the many different aspects of the city. Wasn’t Berlin, with its elegantly dressed women and never-ending nights, the Paris of the east, the London of Continental Europe?

But no reply came from Aunt Fanny all through October in response to that letter from Martha and Helene, the best, most detailed letter they had ever written her. Early in November Helene couldn’t bear the waiting any longer and wrote again. She hoped, she said, that nothing was wrong with her aunt? Here in Bautzen, anyway, they were more than grateful to her for getting in touch with Uncle Herbert’s relations in Breslau. Had their last letter arrived? Life went on in the usual way in Bautzen. After passing her examinations successfully (Helene had first put brilliantly, but struck it out again), she had begun work in the surgical department of the hospital in September. It meant that she was earning more, but she specially liked the work for its own sake anyway. Martha took the pen from Helene’s hand and added, in her scrawl, that Helene had filled the position left vacant by Nurse Leontine, a friend of theirs, when she moved to Berlin two years ago. The professor wanted to have Helene beside him more and more often these days, when he needed someone with great powers of concentration and sure hands to help with difficult operations, because she was very talented in that way. Helene wanted to strike out what Martha had said; it seemed to her boastful and ill-judged. But Martha said Helene’s worst mistake could be to hide her talents under a bushel, it would mean she ended up a helpless little thing in some man’s arms, begging for his favours. She held out the pen to Helene.

You don’t really believe that, do you? Helene wished Martha wouldn’t keep challenging her in that way of hers. She took the pen and went on writing.

Thanks to their uncle’s legacy, she said, their mother was now provided for. Aunt Fanny was warmly invited to visit them and would be a welcome guest at any time. With best wishes and hoping to hear from her soon.

Helene wondered whether she ought to apologize for the extensive account of their household arrangements in her last letter. Such matters, after all, might well bore and repel her aunt. Helene refused to entertain the idea that she might have thought the bit about being a sacred example insulting. But perhaps it seemed presumptuous of her two Protestant nieces from a small town in Lusatia to have chosen her as their example?

More weeks passed and the much desired letter did not arrive until just before Christmas. It was longer and seemed to have been written in more haste than Fanny’s earlier missives; it was hard to decipher the closely written characters. She had so much to do, she said, preparing for the coming festivities; her cousin’s children were looking forward to Chanukah and she was going to buy them little presents, even her lover was counting on Christmas, taking some notice of it. He’d see what came of that, she said. She was expecting the cousins from Vienna and Antwerp to visit at Chanukah, oh, the whole clan of them. She had her hands really full today, she had to discuss the menus for the festive season with her new cook, who was still wet behind the ears, an inexperienced young girl, so she, Fanny, had to keep helping in the kitchen. She liked that — after all, she was fond of cooking herself and she hadn’t cared for the way her old cook, before she finally retired, used to add so much flour to every sauce that it came out stodgy. The older the cook grew, the thicker were her sauces, with more and more floury lumps in them; perhaps her clouded eyes hadn’t been able to see them any more, or perhaps she had let the sauces go lumpy on purpose. Was it overwork? Or maybe she’d been cross with her husband who was making her stay at work until the day he died, using his empty sleeve as the excuse for exploiting her industry. She had suspected the old cook of using the wrong pans for milk or cream, although she’d been forbidden to do any such thing several times. Not that she, Fanny, was going to come over all hypocritical and claim to live strictly by the old dietary rules. No, she couldn’t be doing with all that milky messing about. But in the end it was the woman’s constant complaints about her lazy husband at home that bothered her more than the lumpy sauces. And that was saying quite something, for the sauces hardly deserved to be called sauces at all! In the end her fricassees were pieces of meat wedged solid in a floury paste, not a trace left of the flavours of bay leaf and lemon. Just a meat pudding, simply disgusting!

Helene and Martha couldn’t help laughing when the letter they had been waiting for so long was in their hands. A whole world unfolded before their eyes. Every sentence had to be read several times.

The girls wondered whether these cousins from Vienna and Antwerp were their own relations too. The description, and the fact that Aunt Fanny hadn’t mentioned a husband in any of her letters, made it seem likely. Imperceptibly, Martha and Helene sat up rather straighter. They were sitting on the bench by the stove, warming their backs. It seemed to them as if the letter cast a net all around the world, and Aunt Fanny was close friends with that world, an expert on it, if not its very essence. In a postscript she wrote that while her travels certainly didn’t look like taking her to Lusatia in the near future, she thought maybe the girls might like to visit her in Berlin some time? She’d be happy if they could come for a long stay. The girls would find two first-class railway tickets from Dresden to Berlin enclosed. She thought Dresden must be their nearest real railway station, wasn’t it? Her apartment was large enough, for she had no children herself, and she was sure the two girls could find work in Berlin. She would be only too happy to help them make their way and succeed.

Helene and Martha looked at each other. They shook their heads, laughing. Two years ago, when their father died, they had thought that from now on their lives would consist of working at the hospital and growing old here in Bautzen, at the side of their increasingly confused mother — but here was this letter, the prelude to their future, and only now could they really dream of it. Helene took Martha’s hand and wiped a tear from her eye. She looked at her big sister, her older sister, whom she had always admired for her modest conduct, whose wide-eyed gaze derived its attraction from her perfect appearance of purity, yet also owed something to those kisses that Helene had seen Martha and Leontine exchange. Helene understood the appearance of female virtue very well, the look of a modest, well-behaved, pure girl — it was exactly what a girl should be, it was the making of her. But this letter struck another note, and it aroused Helene’s longings. Helene kissed the lobe of her elder sister’s ear, she sucked it hard and the more the hot tears flowed down her sister’s cheeks, unrestrained, the more mindlessly did Helene suck, as if this sucking of an earlobe and her sister’s salty trickle of tears were the only way of ignoring those tears, of not having to say or think anything. Helene and Martha sat side by side for a while, face to face. It was some time before they were able to think properly again. Martha’s weeping, the relief that had set it off and was the sign of it, made Helene guess how much Martha must have been suffering. Martha had been exchanging romantic letters for the last two years with her friend far away in Berlin, hadn’t she? And although Leontine was unhappy in her marriage, she enjoyed the nightclubs and theatres of the city. Only a few days ago, when Helene had still been waiting in hope and uncertainty for a letter from Aunt Fanny, she had been unable to resist secretly purloining a letter addressed to Martha. It was from Leontine in Berlin. Helene had taken her chance to open the letter skilfully over the steaming kettle while Martha was on late shift at the hospital. Dear sweet friend, Leontine began. I can’t tell you how badly I miss you. It’s not so very often that my course means I must go on studying until late into the night, and I’m already giving the younger students lectures on pathology, but the weekends are mine. Yesterday we went dancing. Antonie brought her friend Hedwig with her, I showed them my new outfit — stolen from Lorenz’s wardrobe. My friends loved it, but I don’t wear his trousers outside the house. I’ve made myself a new dress for when I go out. Antonie was wearing a lovely dress too, a cream-coloured tea gown. We admired her in it so much. Knee-length and unwaisted! She danced beautifully in that tea gown — she sent us out of our minds, and enjoyed it. What can be more exciting than the hint of a waist and a hip when the whole cut of the dress pretends there’s no such thing underneath? She was wearing a silk peony at her neckline. We competed to dance with her. Oh, my beautiful tall friend, I keep thinking of you all the time. Do you remember how we danced half the night away in our attic? You sweet, dear girl, I’m with you so often in my thoughts. It goes to my heart to think I won’t be able to come and see you this Christmas! Lorenz won’t hear of it. He thinks it would be an unnecessary expense; after all, he says, my father is comfortable with my sister Mimi’s family and no one at home misses me. Lorenz always has to be in the right, of course. Nothing he says ever admits the faintest doubt. I tell you, he ought to have been a lawyer. He’d have been really at home in the law courts. Our domestic life together isn’t comfortable, not with the righteous glances he gives the world, narrowing his eyes like a lizard’s. You can imagine how the things he says annoy me. I could always contradict him, but then I suddenly find I couldn’t care less about his remarks, and I usually leave the room and even the house without answering him. He loves to have the last word — well, he’s left alone with it more and more often. Does that satisfy him? Luckily we don’t see much of each other. He sleeps in the library and every morning I tell him his snoring can be heard all over the house. I wish that were so, but to tell you the truth he snores as little as you and I. However, I’d rather have him sleeping at the other end of the apartment so that we meet as little as possible. I’m going to the theatre with Antonie this evening. The Terra Cinema in Hardenbergstrasse has closed and a theatre’s going to be opened there in October instead. The production of Miss Sara Sampson is famous all over the city. I’m sure Lucie Höflich must be simply wonderful as Marwood. But why do I tell you these things, my dearest, when you’ve never seen her on the stage? What wouldn’t I give to be going to the theatre with you this evening. Don’t be jealous, my sweet honey-tongued love. Antonie’s getting married in April, she says she’s very much in love. I saw her fiancé at a distance once, he didn’t look exactly elegant — a burly, broad-shouldered fellow! Just the opposite of delicate, pretty Antonie. How did Helene’s exams go? Give my love to the little one. Love and kisses to you, from Leo.

She signed it just Leo, like a man’s name, with a long inky curve hinting at the rest of the name, but it was certainly Leontine’s handwriting. Helene did not show that she had read Leontine’s letter to Martha, but now, days later, when the girls sat face to face over Aunt Fanny’s invitation, with Martha crying over it and laughing for joy the next moment, Helene was sure there was nothing Martha would rather do than pack a suitcase at once and leave for Berlin, to stay there for ever. In fact, Bautzen had a large railway station of its own, but what did that matter? Helene often went to meet her professor’s colleagues there on his behalf, other doctors and professors from all over Germany, and Bautzen station couldn’t properly be called provincial. Railway carriages built in the carriage factory here were sent halfway round the world, and some of them must certainly go to Berlin. However, Aunt Fanny couldn’t be blamed for thinking of Bautzen as a village and she showed extraordinary generosity with those first-class tickets. To think that neither Martha nor Helene had even been on a train at all!

One afternoon in January, when darkness had already fallen, the professor of surgery asked young Nurse Helene to come to his consulting room. He told her he intended to go to Dresden for a week in March. He was meeting colleagues at the university there, he said, they were planning a jointly written book on the latest developments in medicine. He asked Helene if she would go with him. It would be to her advantage, he said. He didn’t want to hold out too many hopes, he added to the fifteen-year-old, but he could imagine her as his assistant some day. Her nimble fingers on the typewriter and her knowledge of shorthand impressed him. She was clever and gifted, he would feel it an honour to take her to his meeting with his academic colleagues. He expected she’d never been in a motor car, had she? His grave gaze made Helene shy; she felt her throat tighten. There was nothing to be afraid of, said the professor, smiling now, she would only have to take the minutes of a meeting now and then, his old secretary couldn’t travel any more because of water on her legs and he couldn’t ask too much of her. Helene felt herself blushing. Only a little while ago this offer would have seemed a wonderful opportunity. But today she had other plans, not, of course, that the professor could have known anything about them.

We’re going to leave Bautzen in March. It burst out of Helene. Both of us, Martha and me. And when the professor looked at her in silence, as if he didn’t understand what she had said, she sought for more words. We’re going to Berlin; we have an aunt there who’s asked us to stay.

Now the professor stood up, and with his monocle in his eye turned to the large Pharus map on the wall. Berlin? He sounded as if he didn’t know the city and had to look for it on the map.

Helene nodded. Their aunt had sent tickets for the train from Dresden to Berlin, she said, they just had to find the money for the railway journey to Dresden. If the professor would be so very kind as to, well, to take them to Dresden in his car, she would happily take minutes for him during his meetings with his colleagues and wait until those meetings were over before travelling on by train to Berlin. Could I ask when your meetings there are to take place?

The professor of surgery could not share Helene’s pleasure. He did not answer her question about the date, but instead warned her against acting thoughtlessly. And when Helene assured him that they weren’t acting thoughtlessly, on the contrary, she and Martha had thought of nothing else for a long time, he became brusque.

Young ladies ought not to overestimate themselves, he warned her. She and her sister were the daughters of a Protestant family of good standing, after all, and their father had been a well-regarded citizen of Bautzen. Their poor mother, so far as he knew, was on her own and in need of care. What could induce them to turn their backs so irresponsibly on the mother who had borne them?

Helene swayed back and forth on her heels. She reminded the professor that Nurse Leontine was living in Berlin too and studying medicine there, largely thanks to his recommendation. That was probably the wrong thing to say, for now the professor lost his temper. Thanks to my recommendation? he cried. You’re an ungrateful rabble; you don’t know how to behave. Let alone show gratitude. It was more than obvious, he said, that Leontine had not married for love. He had heard every word when she told another nurse that it was a clever idea. Not a good idea, no, a clever idea, she had said! Just imagine that! Was she trying to make him, her professor, look ridiculous, even make him jealous? Perhaps her veneration of him had gone slightly to little Leontine’s head! A clever idea? It would have been a cleverer idea for Leontine to stay at his side. What useless trouble we go to when we let women study! Women, he said, have no business to set their sights on a career calling for stamina, strength and concentration, indeed for putting mental and physical pressure on other human beings. Women would always rank second, simply because in his profession only the best could do research and practise medicine. The professor was getting out of breath. A keen mind, it all depends on that, he gasped out rather than stating it. So why would a woman study? Leontine had been an outstanding nurse, really excellent. It was a shame; who could have guessed what she’d do? It seemed as if she had actually betrayed him, he said, putting his recommendation in her pocket, just like that, and going off to get married in Berlin!

Helene buried her face in her hands. She would never have expected the professor to harbour such a grudge against Leontine. Whenever he referred to her in front of the other nurses and the doctors he spoke with great respect, paying tribute to Nurse Leontine’s abilities. Helene had thought she heard pride in his voice when he said that his little nurse, as he affectionately called her, was now studying in Berlin.

Take your hands away, Helene, he cried, reaching out his own hands to remove hers from her face so that she must look him in the eye. As he did so, the backs of his hands brushed against her breasts so roughly that Helene found it hard to assume he didn’t notice. Now he pulled her up from her chair, his hands either side of her head, pressing so firmly against her ears that it hurt. What are you thinking of, Nurse? Do you suppose you could ever be better off than here at my side, in my ward? You’re allowed to hold my instruments when I make incisions in my patients; I even let you stitch up the wound when my own wife had her operation. What more do you want?

Helene would have liked to answer his question, but she felt numb and still inside.

Now the professor let go of her and started pacing rapidly up and down. Helene could feel how her ears hurt, how they were burning. She had admired him ever since she had first been present at an operation and had seen his hands moving calmly, surely, almost gently, as if he were playing a musical instrument rather than handling bones and sinews, growths and arteries, ever since that first sight of his hands when she observed the fine, precise movements of the individual fingers. At first she had been afraid of him, because of her admiration and his abilities; later she learned to value him, because he never misused those abilities to humiliate a colleague, because he was always at the service of his patients and the art of medicine. Helene had never heard an angry word from him, let alone seen him make a rough gesture. Even when they had been working for ten hours without a break — once it was fifteen hours, through half the night, after the accident at the railway carriage factory — even then the professor had seemed to preserve a godlike calm that made her think of his kindness as well as his self-confidence. Now the professor turned the light on his desk so that it shone into Helene’s eyes, dazzling her.

Sheer high spirits? asked the professor, as if assessing a case. No, probably not, he answered himself. He moved towards her, cupping her chin in his hand. Thoughtlessness? To be sure. So saying, the professor put his head on one side and his voice softened. Perhaps stupidity? As if he were wondering whether this diagnosis might help Helene.

Helene lowered her eyes. Please forgive me.

Forgive you? Stupidity is the last thing I could ever forgive. Tell me honestly, what do you expect to find in Berlin, child?

Helene looked at the floor, which was polished and shiny. We… we, she stammered, searching for words to say more than she could clearly formulate in her mind, well, the way things are now, rising prices, Professor. People want to protest to the town council, they want work and bread. There’ve been rumours that people here at the hospital will lose their jobs too. Surely you’ve heard that, Professor? Well, Martha and I will have opportunities open to us in Berlin, please understand, we’ll have opportunities. We want to work there… and study — well, perhaps.

Study — perhaps? You have no idea what that means, child. Do you know what commitment study calls for, what self-control, how demanding studies are? You’re not up to it. I’m sorry to have to say it so frankly, child, but I really would like to warn you. Indeed, I must warn you. And the expense, you have no notion of the expense. Who is going to keep you while you study? You’re not the sort of girl who’d plan to make your way by going on the streets.

No, certainly not, Professor. Helene could think of nothing more to say. She felt ashamed.

Certainly not, murmured the professor. His eyes went to her wide, smooth face, which could surely hide nothing; his look seemed heavy, pressing down on her, she wanted to say something in reply, to ward off his glance, but then she saw a desire in it that made her look away quickly, and she allowed her tears to flow. She took her handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed her eyes.

Helene. The professor’s gentle voice caressed her ear. Don’t cry, child. You have no one, I know that. No one to care for you and protect you as only a father could.

These words made Helene cry harder than ever. She didn’t want to, but now she was sobbing, and she allowed the professor to place his hand on her shoulder. He immediately put his arm round her.

Stop that, he begged. Helene, forgive me for being so stern with you. Helene. The professor now cautiously pressed her to him. Helene felt his beard touching her hair as he bent slightly and laid his mouth and nose on her head, as if they were man and wife and belonged together. As man and wife. It was the first time a man had been so close to her. He smelled of tobacco and vermouth, and perhaps of masculinity. Helene noticed the trembling sensation in her breast, her heart was racing. She felt hot and cold, then sick. She must have forgotten to breathe. Finally she thought of nothing except that he must let go of her now, because otherwise she would have to push him away with all her might, which was the right and proper thing for a young girl to do.

And he let go. Quite suddenly, just like that. He took a step back and turned away. Without looking at her, he said in a dry tone of voice: I will take you to Dresden, Helene, you and your sister. You say you have the tickets for the rest of your journey?

Helene nodded.

The professor went behind his desk and adjusted the stack of books on it.

Of course I’ll take the minutes for you in Dresden, Helene made haste to say. Her voice was low.

What? The professor looked enquiringly at her. Minutes? Oh, that’s what you mean. No, Nurse Helene, you will not take any minutes for me, not now.

Over the next few weeks the professor seldom asked to have Nurse Helene with him at the operating table. And he dictated no reports and letters to her. Everything outside the operating theatre was done under the matron’s strict supervision. Helene cleaned the instruments, washed and fed the patients in their beds, emptied bedpans. She scraped the furry coating off old people’s tongues and dressed their wounds. As she had not yet been asked to return the key to the poison cupboard, she managed to abstract tiny quantities of morphine for Martha. Through the swing door, she heard the screaming and whimpering of women in the delivery room, and on Sundays she watched them showing the snow in the garden to their newborn babies. The midwives were firmly in charge of the maternity ward. If Helene had wanted to stay here, she would probably have gone over there to offer her services. But then if she had wanted to stay here she would still be standing by the operating table, handing the professor his instruments, taking the needles and stitching up stomachs. Helene scrubbed the floors. The advantage was that she was working with Martha more often now, and as they mopped the corridors they could talk about their future and Berlin. Despite the fact that Helene took almost no further part in operations, and the professor had brought in a new nurse to help him, he did not leave them in any doubt that he would keep his promise. They just had to wait for March to come, and then it would soon be the end of the month.

With the help of his junior doctor, the professor managed to get the trunk containing the two sisters’ things strapped to the back of his car. The young ladies were invited to climb in at once. During the drive he imparted useful information to the girls at the top of his voice; he was obliged to shout because of the roar of the engine and the other noises on the road. At times like these it was important to invest in durable assets, he said, and a car like his was just the thing. Would they like to drive it too?

Yes, definitely. Martha was the first to take the wheel. After a few metres she steered the vehicle straight towards a ploughed field. The furrows, still black, gave way as it drove into the soil. It stuck fast and stood there steaming. All three had to get out. The water that had collected in the furrows formed a thin skin of ice, which cracked when you trod on it. While Martha rubbed her arm, the professor and Helene pushed the car, bracing themselves against it with all their might until they had it back on the road. After that the professor wouldn’t let either of the sisters drive.

They reached the bridge known as Das Blaue Wunder, the Blue Miracle, before midday. The professor waxed eloquent on the brilliance and magnificence of this structure, but Martha and Helene could see only metal struts rising high in the air outside the car window and its legendary blue was nothing compared to the colour of the river. The Elbe, flooding its banks, seemed to them far more magnificent. The drive through the residential area of villas took longer than expected; once they had to stop and add water to the radiator. But after that it all went very fast. They overtook horse-drawn cabs; there was a lot of traffic. Helene would have liked to see the harbour, but they were short of time. As promised, the professor took the sisters to the Central Railway Station. The clocks on the two towers showed different times; the professor was sure that it would be best to believe the one that was ten minutes in advance of the other. Martha and Helene marvelled at the size of the great steel hall with its three aisles. It was the first time they had seen steel arches used to hold up a vaulted glass roof. The sun gleamed out through grey clouds; it was going to rain. Crowds of people were looking into the magnificent display windows of the shops or making for one of the many station platforms. A basket of lemons fell over and people stooped to snatch up the tumbling yellow fruits as if there were no tomorrow. Helene couldn’t resist stooping too and slipping a lemon into her pocket. Two little boys pestered Martha and Helene to buy a bunch of pussy willow. An old woman with a baby in her arms held out one hand. It couldn’t possibly be her own child; Helene thought the mother might have died in childbirth. But what made her think of mothers dying? Before the sisters knew it, a young porter was loading their trunk on to his cart and walking ahead of them, shouting to the crowd to make way. The professor warned Martha and Helene never to lose sight of their luggage and the porter in the crowd. Although they protested, he insisted on seeing the sisters to their train. He accompanied them to the platform, to the luggage van, to their carriage and finally to their seats in the first-class compartment. With a composed smile, he handed Martha a small package of food that his wife had put together that morning. Sausage and hard-boiled eggs, he said quietly. All through the journey the professor had avoided looking at Helene, and he still did. But he was in friendly mood, he shook hands with them both and climbed out of the train. Perhaps he would appear at the window on the platform and wave a white handkerchief? But no, they did not see him again.

The train hissed and moved ponderously out of Dresden station. The rumble of the engine was so deafening that Helene and Martha didn’t talk to each other. Travellers were still pushing and shoving in the corridor, looking for their compartments and their seats. Helene and Martha had been settled in their own velvet-upholstered seats for some time. In all the excitement they had omitted to take off their coats and gloves, but they leaned forward and looked sideways so as not to miss anything that could be seen through the window. They felt sure that a new life was beginning with these elegant seats, this window, this train, a life that would have nothing to do with Bautzen any more, a life that was to make them forget these last weeks with their mother now scolding, now drowsing. On the left, cranes towered to the sky. They must belong to the harbour and the docks, which could not be seen from the train. Mariechen would certainly take good care of Mother; when they said goodbye Martha and Helene had promised to send her enough money on the first of every month. What else was the rent money from Breslau for? Together, they had decided that Mariechen would stay in Tuchmacherstrasse with Mother for the time being. Mariechen was grateful to them for this suggestion. She probably wouldn’t have known where else to go in her old age, after spending twenty-seven years in the service of the Würsich family.

The last buildings in the Old Town were passing by. The train was crossing the Marienbrücke so slowly that you could have walked along beside it. The Elbe meadows were still more black than green; the Elbe itself was in spate, but hardly rose above its banks here in the city. A barge with a load of coal made its way slowly against the current. Helene wondered if it would go as far as Pirna. More houses, streets, squares, the train went through a small station. It was some time before the buildings of the city had all passed by, and the low-built houses and gardens of the suburbs were also behind them. Helene thought she saw the first of the Lusatian Hills rising in the distance. She felt happy excitement and relief when they too disappeared from view, and the train was finally puffing through meadows, woods and fields. Mist hung over the arable fields that they were passing, hardly any green yet showed that spring was on its way, but now and then the sun broke through the hovering mist.

It seemed to Helene as if they had been on their way for weeks. She opened the picnic prepared for them by the professor’s wife and offered Martha something to eat. They ate the sandwiches with boiled sausage, which tasted like blood sausage and had the same fine consistency, devouring the bread and its dark-red filling as if they hadn’t had anything to eat for years, as if blood sausage tasted wonderful. With the sandwiches they drank the tea that they had brought in a flask with a wickerwork cover. Later they felt tired, and their eyes closed even before the train stopped at the next station.

When they woke up again, other travellers were already standing at the windows and out in the corridor. The train’s entry into the city, and soon afterwards into Anhalt Station, brought soft cries of amazement from the girls. Who could have imagined Berlin, its size, all the passers-by, the bicycles, hackney carriages and motor cars? After Dresden station, Martha and Helene had thought they were well prepared for the metropolis, but they held each other’s chilly, sweating hands tight. The deafening noise of the station concourse came in through the open windows. The travellers crowded out of their compartments into the corridor and made for the doors. Outside, Helene could hear the whistling and shouting of the porters, already calling and offering their services out on the platform. Panic seized the girls; they were afraid they wouldn’t get out of the train in time. Martha stumbled as she climbed down and caught her foot in the skirts of her coat, so that she half slipped and half fell off the last step to the platform. She landed on all fours. Helene couldn’t help laughing and was ashamed of herself. She clenched her fist and bit her glove. Next moment she took the handhold by the door herself, accepted an elderly gentleman’s helping hand, and quickly climbed out of the train. She and the elderly gentleman helped Martha up. The station was full of people, some of whom had come to meet their nearest and dearest from the train, but there were also many traders and young women going up and down offering everything from newspapers to flowers to shoe-cleaning for sale, all of them items which Martha and Helene realized only now that they lacked. At the same time they looked at each other, and down at their dirty shoes, where the Saxon soil of the ploughed field out of which they had pushed the professor’s car still clung. And their hands were empty — they ought to have thought before now of taking their aunt a present. Hadn’t the physicist Röntgen died only the other day? Trying to think of small talk, Helene was searching her memory for world news that she had heard recently. She seldom took her chance of reading any of the newspapers left lying around the hospital. What did she and Martha know of the way of the world in general and Berlin in particular? Perhaps a little bunch of daffodils? Were those real tulips? Helene had never seen tulips so tall and slender.

As Helene tried and failed to pin down any of her fleeting thoughts — they ought to have started printing banknotes in good time, it occurred to her, and then: what nonsense! Then again: who was Cuno? President of the Reich or Chancellor? Then she thought of those fine-sounding names again: Thyssen and France and cash, cash, cash; printing money would have been just the thing, whether it was legal or not. Come on, she told Martha, who was still disentangling her coat and tucking her hair under her hat. She hoped their trunk was still there.

Together, the sisters hurried along the platform to the luggage van. A queue had formed outside it. The girls kept looking over their shoulders. Their aunt had suggested in her last letter that they should take a charabanc or the tram to reach her apartment in Achenbachstrasse. But wasn’t it possible that in spite of this advice she would come to the station to meet them herself?

Do you think Aunt Fanny will recognize us?

She’ll have to. Martha was holding the luggage voucher ready, already counting out the right money, although there was still a dense line of people waiting in front of them.

It won’t be difficult with you. Helene scrutinized Martha. You look like Mother.

The question is whether Aunt Fanny can see that — or wants to. Perhaps she doesn’t remember what her cousin looked like?

She won’t have a photograph of Mother. Mother has only one from before we were born, that photo of her wedding.

Has? Martha smiled. She had it, rather. At least I brought the photo with me. We want a souvenir, don’t we?

A souvenir? Helene looked at Martha blankly. She thought of saying: Not me, I don’t, but then decided not to.

Need a place to stay? Nice hostel, young ladies? Someone was plucking at Helene’s coat from behind. Or a private room with a landlady? Helene turned. A young man in shabby clothes stood behind her.

Running water and electric light? a second man asked, pushing the first aside.

I can tell you a good place. Those hostels for strangers are full of lice, and who can afford a hotel? You just come with me! An elderly woman took Helene’s arm.

Let go! Helene’s voice cracked with alarm. No thank you, no thank you, we don’t need anywhere, Martha was saying to all the people crowding around them.

We have an aunt in Berlin, Helene added, and now she did up the top button of her coat.

I’m sure they didn’t get on because Aunt Fanny thought she’d risen higher in the world than Mother, Martha whispered in Helene’s ear. She had, too!

You think so? I don’t. Helene often felt uncomfortable when Martha said something spiteful about their mother. Much as she too feared her and often as she had quarrelled with her, she hated it, couldn’t bear it when Martha expressed her poor opinion of Selma for no reason at all. Martha enjoyed saying such things, taking a kind of delight in exposing their mother that Helene shared only occasionally and to a lesser extent.

Aunt Fanny stole from Mother, Helene claimed now. She remembered their mother saying so on the evening when they had first told her about their correspondence with Aunt Fanny.

And you believe that? mocked Martha. What would she have stolen? A dried toadstool, maybe? If you ask me she just made it up. Maybe it was the other way round. Aunt Fanny would never have needed to do such a thing.

She’ll be a fine lady, I feel sure she will. Helene looked ahead of her. The queue was not so long now and, deep in conversation, the sisters had missed hearing the man ahead of them by the big door of the luggage van calling their number for the fourth time. Now he called their names too.

Petitions from the Democratic parties rejected! a man was shouting at the top of his voice, brandishing a newspaper; a whole stack of them threatened to slip from under his arm. The National Socialist Party’s Sturmabteilung forges ahead!

That’s all old hat, shouted another newspaper boy derisively, and he too began bellowing at the top of his voice. Earthquake! He was waving a paper himself and Helene wondered if he had just thought up this news item to sell more papers. In any case, people were snatching newspapers from his hand. Huge earthquake in China!

Calling for the last time! Number four hundred and thirty-seven, first class, Würsich!

That’s us, that’s us! Helene shouted back as loudly as she could, and hurried the short way forward to the man who, in the absence of anyone to take their trunk, was just about to put it on the big truck for unclaimed items.

Rote Fahne! shouted a thin girl with a small handcart of newspapers. Rote Fahne!

Die Vossische!

Der Völkische Beobachter! Helene recognized the young paper boy who had been shouting just now. How old would he be? Ten? Twelve? Occupation of the Ruhr goes on! No coal for France! Earthquake in China! He too was now shouting the headline about the earthquake, although it was doubtful that the paper he was selling had any news of it.

Buy the Weltbühne, ladies and gents, fresh off the press, the Weltbühne! A strikingly tall man in a hat, suit and glasses was striding along the platform. Although he spoke in a strange accent, which Helene immediately assumed to be Russian, his small red magazines were selling well. Soon after he had passed Martha and Helene, an elegantly dressed lady bought his last copy.

Only when someone called: Vorwärts! Vorwärts! Vorwärts! did Helene come to the bold decision to take a wad of banknotes out of her coat pocket. The lemon was still in the pocket too and the notes were now lemon-scented. After all, she knew Vorwärts, the Socialist weekly paper, and she hoped it would give an impression of elegance and culture if they arrived at their aunt’s carrying a newspaper.

They took a cab with several seats in it; perhaps this was what Aunt Fanny meant by a charabanc. The buildings and advertising columns were already casting long shadows. On Schöneberger Ufer the cab stopped; it looked as if the horse were leaning forward; it went down on its knees, its forelegs gave way, there was a loud cracking of wood and the horse slumped sideways in its harness. The driver jumped up. He shouted something, climbed down and patted the recumbent horse on the neck. Walking round the cab, he took the bucket off its hook and went away without a word of explanation. Helene realized that he was going to a pump, where he had to wait until someone else had filled a bucket and it was his turn. The lanterns along the street were lit. There was shining and sparkling everywhere. So many lights. Helene stood up and turned round. A motor car with a funny chequered pattern like a border all round it stopped beside them. Did they need help? asked the driver, leaning out of his window. Maybe they could do with a taxi? But Martha and Helene shook their heads, and looked in the direction their cab driver had gone. The taxi driver didn’t ask again. A young man was hailing him at the crossing ahead.

Perhaps we ought to have changed into that motor cab. Helene looked around. Their driver was coming back with a bucket of water. He sprayed the horse, then tipped the whole bucketful over it, but the horse didn’t move. The sun had set, the birds were still twittering, it felt chilly.

Got much further to go? It was the first remark the driver had addressed to them.

Martha and Helene shrugged their shoulders, not sure.

Hm, yes, Achenbach, that’s a good stretch, can’t make it, there’s your baggage too. The driver looked worried.

A policeman strolled up. The trunk was unloaded, and Martha and Helene had to get out. Another cab was hailed for them. The sky was dark blue by the time they finally arrived outside the building in Achenbachstrasse. The porch of the four-storey apartment house was lit, a broad flight of five stone steps led up to the elegant front door of wood and glass. A servant was waiting at the doorway to welcome them; he went over to the cab to take their trunk. Martha and Helene climbed the broad steps to the first floor. Was that marble, genuine Italian marble?

So here you are at last! cried a tall woman. She reached out to Martha and Helene with hands in long gloves that covered her elbows. Bare shoulders gleamed above them. Martha didn’t hesitate for long; she took one of the lady’s hands, bent her head and kissed it.

Goodness me, no, are we at a royal court? My nieces. Aunt Fanny turned on her heel and her long scarf floated into Helene’s face. Some of the ladies and gentlemen standing around nodded in greeting, raised their glasses to welcome the sisters and drank to each other. The ladies wore flimsy dresses without any visible waistline, and with cords and scarves round their hips; the skirts only just covered their knees, and their shoes had little straps and small heels. Many of them had cut their hair as short as Leontine had once cut hers, to just above their earlobes, and even shorter at the nape of the neck. One woman seemed to have her hair crimped close to her head in waves. Helene looked curiously at these hairstyles and wondered how you achieved them. Just the sight all those necks confused her, some rising from straight, prominent shoulders, others from shoulders that sloped delicately, always leading the eye to the heads of the girls, young women and ladies as if heads and no longer hips were the crown of creation, the hips had been on show quite long enough. The gentlemen wore elegant suits and were smoking pipes; they looked at the sisters who had just arrived with expressions of avid benevolence. One stout gentlemen gazed into Helene’s face in a friendly manner, then let his glance move over her and her coat, which was now opening to show what to him must certainly look like a dress in an old-fashioned country fashion. With a kind, avuncular nod he turned, took a glass from a tray being carried round by a young lady and immersed himself in conversation with a small woman whose feather boa came right down to the backs of her knees.

What pretty children! A friend of Aunt Fanny’s took her arm, swaying tipsily, her head thrust forward like the head of a bull with red curls to look at Helene. Her large, sequin-covered bosom glittered as she straightened up to her full height right in front of Helene’s eyes. Why have you been hiding these bewitching creatures from us so long, my dear?

Lucinde, meet my nieces.

A gentleman leaned curiously over Aunt Fanny’s bare shoulders to look from Helene to Martha and back again. Obviously the guests filled every nook and cranny of the first floor of this building. The front door was still open behind them. Helene looked around, feeling she would like to escape. When she felt something touch her calf and looked down, she saw a coal-black poodle, newly clipped. The sight of the poodle helped her to breathe more easily.

A housemaid and a manservant took the sisters’ bags and helped them out of their coats. Helene’s newspaper was taken away — no one had noticed it — and two more menservants came up the steps with their trunk. Helene hurried a few steps after the girl carrying her coat and took the lemon out of its pocket.

A lemon, how delightful! screeched Lucinde the red-headed bull, but in as quiet a screech as possible.

Quick, go and freshen yourselves up and change for dinner, we dine in an hour’s time. Aunt Fanny was beaming at them. Her face, thin and regular, was like a painting with her cheeks so dark with rouge, while her eyelids shimmered green and gold. Long lashes rose and fell like black veils over her big black eyes. A young man passed Aunt Fanny and stopped beside her with his back to Martha and Helene. He kissed her bare shoulder, then laid his hand briefly against her cheek and went on to another lady who was obviously waiting for him. Fanny mimed clapping her hands. She looked so distinguished, elegant, graceful — words to describe her tumbled over themselves in Helene’s head — she looked so charming as her long hands touched but never actually made any clapping sound. Fantastic, she said. My treasure here will show you everything. Otta?

The housemaid Otta, white-haired and smooth-skinned, made her way through the throng of guests and led the sisters to a small room at the far end of the apartment. It smelled of violets. Two narrow beds had been made up, and in a niche in the wall stood a washstand with a big mirror. There was a lily pattern engraved on the rim of the glass. Candles in a five-branched silver candleholder gave a soft light, like the candlelight on an altar. The housemaid showed them towels, chamber pots, a wardrobe. And there was a bathroom and lavatory, a water closet, at the front of the apartment near the entrance door, the housemaid whispered. Then she excused herself, saying she had to open the door to other guests.

Is this a party? Martha looked in astonishment at the door that had closed behind the housemaid.

Change for dinner? Helene threw the lemon on the bed and put her hands on her hips. I’m already wearing my best dress.

She can’t know that, little angel. She won’t have looked closely.

Did you see her lips? Did you see all that make-up she’s wearing?

Vermilion. And her hair, cut to just above the earlobes — it’s the style in town, little angel. I’ll cut your blonde locks for you tomorrow, said Martha, laughing nervously as she opened the trunk. She rummaged around in it with both hands and sighed with relief when she found her little bag. Turning her back to Helene, she shook out its contents on the washstand. Helene sat down cautiously on one of the two beds. She stroked the throw arranged over it; it was so soft. The word cashmere came into her mind, although she had no idea what cashmere felt like. Ducking to look under Martha’s arms, Helene saw her open a small bottle and fill the syringe with liquid. Her hands were shaking. She rolled up the sleeve of her dress, tied her large handkerchief round her arm with an expert gesture and plunged the needle into the skin.

Helene was surprised to see how openly Martha let her watch all this. She had never used the syringe in front of her sister before. Helene rose and went over to the window. It looked out on a shady courtyard with maple trees, a carpet-beating frame and a small fountain. At this blue twilight hour, daffodils were in bloom.

Why are you doing that now?

Martha did not answer this question asked behind her back. Slowly, she pressed the contents of the syringe into her vein and sank back on to the bed.

Little angel, there could be no finer moment than this! We’ve arrived. We’re here. Martha stretched out on the bed and reached one arm towards Helene. Berlin, she said softly, as if her voice were dying of happiness, drowning in it. We’re in Berlin now.

Don’t say such things. Helene took a step towards the trunk, found her brushes in its side pocket and let down her hair.

The poison is sweet, little angel. Don’t look at me as if I were a damned soul. So I’m going to die some day — what about it? I suppose one’s allowed to live a little first? Martha chuckled in a way that, just for a moment, reminded Helene of their mother, left behind at home in her deranged state of mind.

Lying on her back, Martha kicked off her shoes — she had obviously undone their long laces already — undid the buttons of her dress and, as if it were perfectly natural, placed one hand on her bare breast. Her skin was white, thin and delicate, so delicate that Helene could see the veins shimmering underneath it.

Helene combed her hair. She sat down at the washstand and poured some water into the basin from the silver jug, she picked up the fragrant soap, smelling of southern lavender, and washed. Now and then Martha sighed.

Will you sing me a song, little angel?

What shall I sing? Helene’s voice had dried up. In spite of her long afternoon nap in the train, she felt tired, and could not find in herself the joy and happiness that she had expected to feel on arriving in Berlin, that she had in fact felt on the station.

Do you love me, dear heart, my golden girl?

Helene turned to Martha. Martha had difficulty concentrating her eyes on Helene; they kept sliding away from her and they looked as if the pupils filled them entirely.

Martha, do you need help? Helene looked at her sister, wondering if she was always like this just afterwards.

Martha hummed a tune that sounded very odd to Helene’s ears, winding its way between F sharp major and B flat minor. I wonder if Aunt Fanny has a piano?

You haven’t played for ages.

It’s not too late. Martha giggled in that strange way again and smacked her lips slightly, as if she were having difficulty in suppressing her giggles. She retched. Next moment Martha sat up, reached for one of the little red glasses standing on the glass-fronted cupboard and spat into it.

Very elegant, a little spittoon like this. Our fine aunt thinks of everything.

Martha, what is all this? Helene gathered up her hair, twisted it to the sides of her head and pinned it up. We have to be out there in half an hour’s time. Will you be able to manage that? Can you pull yourself together?

Why so worried, little angel? Haven’t I managed everything so far? Everything.

Perhaps I’d better open the window.

Everything, little angel, what choice did I have but to manage everything? But now we’re here, my golden girl.

Why do you call me your golden girl? That’s what Father used to call me. Helene wanted to wrinkle her brow in a frown, but the dip between her forehead and her strikingly small nose was so shallow that only a few fine lines formed above her nose.

I know, I know. And did the pet name die with him, little angel?

Helene handed Martha a glass of water. Drink this. I hope that’ll disperse the mists.

Tut, tut, tut, mists, dear heart. Martha shook her head. This is spring’s awakening, little angel.

Please get dressed. I’ll help you. And before Martha could turn down Helene’s offer she was buttoning up her sister’s dress.

And I thought you wanted to kiss me, dear heart. You didn’t answer my question. Do you remember what I asked?

Helene was kneeling in front of Martha now to help her get her shoes on. Martha dropped back on the bed and whispered: Dear heart, dear heart, you will answer me.

When Helene had tied her sister’s laces, she tugged at her arm to make her sit up. Martha’s long torso was heavy and swayed. She sank back once more.

Oh, my poor foot, it’s too light to stay on this floor, please hold it. Martha saw Helene stretch both legs out stiffly in front of her so that they reached over the edge of the bed. At the same time she breathed deeply and raised her shoulders.

Can you stand up?

Easy, couldn’t be easier. Martha stood up, leaning on Helene’s arm, and raised her head. She was only a little taller than Helene now. Her words came out sharply and distinctly, with a hiss on every ‘s’, although the intervals between the words were noticeably long. Perhaps Martha thought she had to speak like that to sound clear and sober.

Someone knocked at the door.

Yes? Helene opened it, and the housemaid Otta took a small step aside and bobbed a curtsy. Her cap was perched on her hair, looking as white and starched as if she had made no effort at all this evening.

Can I help the young ladies?

Thank you very much, we’ll be all right. Helene plucked a hair off Martha’s dress. How did you speak to housemaids in Berlin, she wondered?

You’ll hear the gong for dinner in a minute. If you would like to come and sit down?

By all means, said Martha with dignity, and she walked past the housemaid with her head held high and into the long corridor. You could hardly see her swaying.

There were place cards at the dinner table. As soon as the party was seated a gentleman at the head of the table rose to his feet. He wore a ring on every finger, each more magnificent than the last. Bonsoir, mes amis, copains et copines, cousin et cousine. He raised his glass courteously to the company. His oily, combed-back hair rested on the collar of his shirt, his white face looked as if he were wearing make-up. He laughed out loud and now began speaking German with a French accent. It is an honour for me to wish my dear cousine… ah, why don’t we throw the lies overboard today and devote ourselves to other vices? Let me say it’s a joy to me to wish my young lover here good health and a long life. To Fanny, to our dear friend!

Astonished, Helene looked around. Could he have meant their Fanny, Aunt Fanny? How could the speaker call her his young lover when she might be in her mid-forties and he wasn’t yet thirty? Fanny thanked him; her black eyes smiled under heavy lashes. Stars sparkled in her hair. She placed her hand on her long neck, and it looked as if she were caressing herself here at the dinner table in front of her guests. There was a net over her short dark hair that must be sprinkled with diamonds. Or perhaps they were just imitation gemstones, but she wore them like diamonds. The ladies and gentlemen raised their glasses and cried enchanté, and à votre santé, ma chère, and à mon amie to Aunt Fanny.

Martha was sitting very upright on the opposite side of the table, her eyes shining as she talked to her neighbours, laughing her clear laughter again and again, and letting them pour more champagne into her glass. Helene kept an eye on her; she intended to take care of her sister. Martha hardly touched the delicious food, now and then she put her fork into her vol-au-vent and later she kept blowing on her soufflé as if it were too hot. There was a grating, crackling noise from a large brass-coloured funnel, a voice croaked in song: In fifty years we’ll all be gone. When the party moved from the table to sit on chaises longues, Martha gratefully took the arm of the man who had been sitting beside her at dinner listening to her chatter. Once Helene thought that Martha was crying. But as soon as she had made her way across the salon to her sister Martha was laughing, dabbing tears of delight from her face with the handkerchief that she had tied round her arm earlier. In the course of the evening Martha accepted cigarettes and smoked them through a holder that Helene had never seen in her sister’s hands before. Later Fanny’s lover, whose name was Bernard pronounced in the French way, had a pipe lit. Nothing less than opium could be offered in tribute to her, he opined. Her friends clapped.

Martha once called out, raising her voice: Oh, aunt, what a wonderful party — and Helene could hardly believe her ears, because she had never before heard Martha raise her voice like that, laughing, in such company. Aunt Fanny replied, also with laughter, from the other end of the big room: Aunt? Darling, is that what you’re going to call me? I feel a hundred years older right away. An old lady — aren’t aunts all old ladies? Fanny, darling, just Fanny!

No one offered Helene a pipe or cigarettes; she supposed word had gone round quickly that she was still under sixteen and came from Lusatia. Two gentlemen looked after the flapper, as they called her, pouring champagne for Helene and later on water, and obviously enjoying reminding each other that Helene was still a child. What a pretty flapper! It was charming to see her drink water from her glass. Was she always so thirsty? The two gentlemen were amusing themselves, while Helene took care never to lose sight of Martha. Martha was laughing with everyone, pouting prettily as if to kiss a young gentleman who hadn’t taken his cap off. But next moment she put her arm round a half-naked woman who wore a sleeveless dress like Aunt Fanny’s, and whose cries of ooh-la-la reached Helene’s ears over all those heads, so shrill a sound that it hurt. Ooh-la-la, the woman kept crying, putting her own arm round Martha, and Helene clearly saw her hand fall on Martha’s shoulder and later move to her waist, until it seemed as if the woman would never let go of her again. Was that a pipe Martha was smoking? Perhaps Helene was mistaken.

A little more water? One of the two gentlemen leaned forward to pour Helene water from the crystal carafe.

Late in the evening the party broke up. But not to go home, as Helene thought at first; they were all going on to a club together.

Help my niece into her coat, Fanny told one of her admirers, a tall blond man, her glance indicating Martha. She told Helene in kindly tones that she must make herself entirely at home and wished her sweet dreams.

But the sweet dreams were elusive and Helene couldn’t sleep. Left alone with the servants, she had gone straight back to her room, but she couldn’t help waiting up until the first light of dawn. Only when morning light came falling through the stone-grey curtains did she hear sounds in the apartment. A door closed. There were voices, laughter, steps approaching down the long corridor. Their bedroom door opened and Martha, half stumbling, half staggering, was helped into the room, where she immediately dropped on to Helene’s bed. The door closed again. Out in the corridor, Helene heard Fanny laughing with her French lover and a woman friend, perhaps Lucinde. Helene got up, pushed the second bed up to hers and undressed Martha, who couldn’t move anything but her lips now.

Little angel, we’re here. The forfeit is a kiss. You only have to open the gates of heaven and you can go through. But Martha couldn’t giggle any more; she snuffled and fell asleep, her head sinking to one side.

Helene got Martha into her nightdress, unpinned her hair and laid her big sister down beside her. Martha smelled of wine and smoke, and a heavy scent that Helene couldn’t place, both flowery and resinous. Helene put her arms firmly round Martha, and she was still staring into the dim light by the time Martha was snoring softly.

The approaching winter brought heavy snow. Martha and Helene had pushed the trunk far under one of their beds, and even at Christmas it didn’t occur to them to pack it and go back to Bautzen to visit their mother. A letter from Mariechen came at the beginning of every month. It described their mother’s state of health, mentioned the weather and the domestic finances. While Fanny enjoyed Martha’s company, took her to every club and every revue, Helene relished the quiet of the ground-floor apartment. What a large library Fanny had, full of books that she herself had obviously never read, but she must feel flattered by the sight of them. Helene often spent the night reading on the chaise longue. If Fanny and Martha came staggering home in the small hours, with a man in tow but keeping in the background, and their eyes fell on Helene they burst out laughing. But was Fanny frowning? Perhaps she didn’t like Helene to read her books. Oh, child, laughed Fanny, raising an admonitory forefinger, you need your sleep if you want to be beautiful. And when Helene was lying in bed later, smelling the smoke and perfume of Martha’s evening, she would hesitantly reach out, stroke Martha’s back and rest her hand on Martha’s hip. Helene fell asleep to the sound of her sister’s regular breathing.

I love you girls, Fanny assured them one morning as they sat on her veranda round the low table, which had a tiled top painted with pale roses, drinking tea and nibbling little sticks of ginger. The veranda was full of the scent of bergamot. Fanny drank her tea with a great deal of sugar and no milk. Every morning a plate of poppyseed cake stood on the table, but Helene had never tasted it; she felt shy of reaching over the table uninvited and helping herself to a piece. Fanny’s lover must still be in bed — in the boudoir, Fanny liked to say. Or at least one of her lovers. Recently a new one had frequently visited the apartment, tall, fair-haired Erich. Like Bernard, he was a few immaterial years younger than Fanny. She didn’t seem to have chosen between the two of them, but they were seldom both her guests at the same time. Also like Bernard, Erich usually slept until midday, but while Bernard spent the rest of the day betting on horses and watching the trotting races, tall blond Erich frequented the Grünewald tennis courts, and now in winter the indoor courts. Once he had asked Helene if she would like to go with him. He had waited to invite her until a moment came when Fanny wasn’t around, and he had put his hand on the back of her neck so suddenly and with such passion that she had been afraid of coming across Erich ever since. It was true that in front of Fanny he took not the slightest notice of her, but his glances fell on her all the more avidly when Fanny’s back was turned. Today the veranda windows were clouded with condensation; the heating was still full on in the apartment, and February snow lay on the trees and rooftops.

The door opened and the housemaid Otta brought in a tray with a pot of freshly brewed tea. From Ceylon, said Otta, placing the tray on the table. She put a silver cover over the pot to keep it hot, and left.

I do love you girls, whispered Fanny again. Her black poodle, who answered to the name of Cleo — Fanny pronounced it in the English way and said it was short for Cleopatra — wagged her short tail, a soft ball of hair. Cleo’s coat shone as she looked attentively from one young woman to another. When Fanny threw the dog a little piece of poppyseed cake, Cleo snapped it up without looking at her, as if she weren’t waiting for something sweet at all, but was giving all her attention to the girls’ conversation. Fanny dabbed at her nose with her handkerchief; she blew her nose a lot, and not just in winter.

Oh, my poor nose is all inflamed again, she whispered, lost in thought as she stared at her knees, like my mind in general. But children, I do love you.

Leontine was perched on the wooden arm of Martha’s chair, jiggling her toes impatiently. Martha had met Leontine again in summer, and since then they had seen each other daily. These days Leontine was spending the night at the ground-floor apartment in Achenbachstrasse more and more often.

My friend says they have only one vacancy. They’re looking for an experienced nurse. That’s Martha. Fanny made a sympathetic little moue in Helene’s direction and batted her eyelashes, to show Helene that she was genuinely sorry. Helene, dear, something else will very soon turn up for you too, sweetheart.

Martha was to start work next week at the Jewish Hospital in Exerzierstrasse, in the north of the city. Fanny had an admirer who was medical director of the ward for the terminally ill. Fanny said he was old and randy, and had described the post as might have been expected of him. The nurse was to be between twenty and thirty. Just like Martha. Yes, the applicant must be the right age, he only liked women of that age, which was why his admiration for Fanny had faded slightly over the last few years. It was difficult to find staff for the terminal ward because of all the incurable illnesses and dying patients, so the management would prefer an older nurse. Well, of course twenty-six was far from old, but all the same Martha had more experience than Helene, didn’t she?

Helene tried to look content with that. Martha couldn’t suppress a yawn. She was still wearing the silk dressing gown that her aunt had recently passed on to her.

Leontine nodded on Martha’s behalf. Absolutely right, no one’s Martha’s equal in emptying and filling things, cleaning up the patients and soothing them, feeding them and applying dressings.

And you’ll learn the right prayers, won’t you? Fanny meant it seriously. She took Martha to synagogue with her on high days and holidays, but even at home Martha had not been very diligent over saying her prayers in St Peter’s Cathedral.

Martha picked a stick of ginger out of the flower-shaped glass dish, crooked her little finger and nibbled the ginger stick. Over the last few months, Helene and Martha had often discussed their reluctance to be a burden on their aunt, living at her expense. They were enjoying life in the big apartment, but they would have liked to give Fanny some money for their board and also to have money of their own to spend. Accepting financial presents made them feel uncomfortable. There had turned out to be problems with the Breslau legacy. The rents didn’t come in regularly, and the agent who was supposed to be managing them hadn’t sent any news for months. Martha and Helene couldn’t bring themselves to ask their aunt for money to send home to Bautzen. When a letter arrived from Mariechen, appealing for help and saying she didn’t know where to turn for money to buy food for their mother, Helene had stolen into the larder and taken some provisions, which they sent by parcel post to Bautzen. At the same time Martha had abstracted one of Fanny’s gramophone records and taken it to the pawnbroker’s to exchange for some money. A loan was the way Martha and Helene had described it to each other, until one day Aunt Fanny asked casually if they knew what had become of her Richard Tauber record, which seemed to have disappeared. Helene had been overcome by a coughing fit so that they could avoid telling all to Fanny. Martha said at once that she had dropped it and it broke. She just hadn’t dared to tell her aunt, she said. False remorse? Martha’s look of wide-eyed innocence was astonishing, as always. Fanny proved magnanimous.

Martha and Helene had applied for posts at several hospitals over the last few months, but so far unsuccessfully. The whole city seemed to be looking for work, and those who did have a job wanted a better one with higher pay. If you had no job you did deals, but the sisters didn’t understand enough about that. People dropped hints about the black market, and bets, and how only pretty girls could sell their services for some things, at least at the revues. Fanny’s friend Lucinde worked in a revue, naked, as she said with relish, wearing nothing but her hair. Helene’s nursing certificates from Bautzen won her some admiration, but her age put the hospitals off, she was considered too young for a permanent nursing post in a hospital.

I’ll take the job. Martha put the nibbled ginger stick down on the rim of her saucer. She rested her head against Leontine and held her hand in front of her mouth. Fanny looked at Leontine and Martha, smiled, and ran her tongue first over her teeth and then over her lips.

I’m glad. But you know you are my guests — for ever, if you like. So far as I’m concerned you don’t have to work. You do know that, don’t you? Fanny looked round at them. She might have no husband and no parents any more, but obviously Fanny was still so rich, without anyone to share her fortune, that she had no financial worries. I wasn’t including Leontine, of course, said Fanny, but then who wouldn’t like to have a beautiful woman as a hospital doctor? When do you take your exams, Leontine?

In the autumn. I’m not hoping for too much — I’ll start with Professor Friedrich at the Charité Hospital. He may help me to get my further degree and my lecturer’s qualification.

Oh, you disappoint me, darling. I see you in a little doctor’s car, stopping outside my house with your medical bag. Why not aim for a big private practice — you could get young assistants to help you, men like Erich or Bernard?

Flattered, Leontine smiled. She had developed a curious flexibility in Berlin, she smiled more often, sometimes just with her eyes, and even her movements had become as graceful as a cat’s. Leontine rose and went round the table. She took Helene’s blonde braid in both hands, as if weighing it, then placed one hand on Helene’s head. Helene felt warm; there was nothing nicer than the sensation of Leontine’s hand on her head.

Private patients still don’t trust a woman doctor, said Leontine, raising her eyebrows with a rueful look. And I don’t have the necessary funds either.

Well, of course your assistants don’t need to be men; you could have woman assistants, Leontine. Like Martha and Helene. Fanny chuckled. I hear you’re married to some feeble-minded palaeontologist. One might think he had funds.

Lorenz, feeble-minded? Leontine’s eyes sparkled. Who says so? My dear husband wouldn’t feel at all confident about it if I set up in private practice. Now Leontine was laughing, the wry laughter they knew from the old days.

Surely he must be feeble-minded if he doesn’t notice that his wife fails to spend the night at home! Fanny’s tongue slid along her top row of teeth again, then licked her lips.

Lorenz is liberal on principle — and he’s lost interest in me anyway.

Fanny threw her poodle Cleo a morsel of poppyseed cake and poured herself a glass of brandy. Now her eye fell on Helene. Leontine says you can use a typewriter and do shorthand? Fanny’s nose was running, but she noticed too late. She only just managed to catch the trickle on her chin with her handkerchief. Didn’t you keep the accounts in your father’s printing works?

Helene diffidently shrugged her shoulders. It seemed so long ago that she’d done these things. Her old life had retreated into the distance; she didn’t like to think about it. She practised not remembering — that, she had recently whispered to a young man making up to her at a party, was the only way to hold on to youth. And she had looked at him so innocently that the young man had to take her seriously and wanted to agree with her.

Helene had spent most of the last few months in Berlin reading in Fanny’s library, going for walks and facing up to her private worries about Martha. She seldom let Martha out of her sight, although she admired the fearlessness with which Martha and Leontine smuggled themselves into every louche club in Bülowstrasse. Helene hated the nights when she was woken by the moans of her sister and her sister’s friend. She never felt lonelier than there in her narrow bed, although it was less than a metre away from the equally narrow bed where Martha and Leontine were panting for breath. Sometimes they giggled, sometimes they stopped, whispered and wondered out loud, so that Helene was bound to hear it, whether they had woken her up with their whispers. Then again there were the sounds of kissing, the sighs, particularly Martha’s, and the rustling of the bedclothes. Sometimes Helene thought she could almost feel the warmth radiating from their bodies.

You know my friend Clemens the pharmacist — he’s looking for a girl to help him, someone who can use a typewriter, a pretty girl who’d be nice to the customers. I could ask him.

That’s her all over, said Leontine, stroking Helene’s hair.

You’re discreet, aren’t you? Martha wrinkled her brow doubtfully.

That’s her all over too, repeated Leontine, still stroking Helene’s hair.

Pharmacists keep secrets. Fanny was not exactly whispering, but murmuring in her velvety voice. Mine, Bernard’s, Lucinde’s, half the city’s secrets.

Helene didn’t know what to say in reply. Unlike Martha, she had not managed to win Fanny’s affection and confidence. They had been living with their aunt for almost a year now, Fanny passed on her clothes to them and introduced them to her circle of friends, but it seemed as if she thought Helene a naïve child and would do all she could to ensure that didn’t change. Sometimes Helene thought she detected a kind of reserve towards her in Fanny. She discussed certain things only with Martha, whether they were to do with clothes or society gossip. Helene had seldom felt as much aware of the nine years’ age difference between herself and Martha as she did in their aunt’s presence. Usually all the doors on the ground floor stood open, but when Fanny called Martha into a room with her she often closed the door, and Helene guessed that behind it her little round box with the tiny spoon and the white powder was coming out, something she shared only with Martha and no one else. Then Helene would stand on tiptoe, listening, and hear her sniffing and sighing, and at those moments, when she stood on tiptoe with her cold feet in a dark corridor, with only the pendulum of the white English grandfather clock and its golden dial to keep her company, she was sorry she had come to Berlin with Martha. Fanny had never once asked if Helene would like to go out with them in the evening.

Only when Leontine and Martha visited the now rather faded Luna Park was Helene allowed to go too. The girls went in the old artificial wave pool there — the waves were generated only by the wind now — and splashed about, taking no notice of the gentlemen, both young and older, who strolled around the rim of the basin to watch them. The artificial wave pool was nicknamed the Nymphs’ Basin and the Tarts’ Aquarium in the city, which seemed to the girls poor ways of expressing the lively interest shown by the young and old gentlemen. The girls liked the waves and the slide into the lake, and paid for their own entrance. Didn’t that mean the male spectators had no right to regard themselves as pimps and potential customers?

I’ll tell you girls something: this is a small city. The world thinks it’s large because it’s such a beautiful soap bubble in our imagination. Fanny lit one of her English cigars and tilted her head back. Each fantastic bubble stretches, grows bigger, brighter, more fragile. Is it falling? Fanny drew on the thin cigar. Is it rising? Fanny puffed little smoke rings. Is it coming down? Fanny was enjoying her flight of fancy, but then her smile disappeared. Well, Helene, if you can keep secrets the pharmacist would appreciate that. So would I. I’ll ask him about the job. Fanny nodded as if to confirm her words and encourage herself. She drained the final drop of brandy from her small glass and dabbed her nose carefully with her handkerchief. A tear ran from the corner of her eye. Oh, dear children, how I love you. You do know that you don’t need to work, don’t you? Why should you be any worse off than Erich and Bernard? Stay with me, fill my home and my heart, she said, visibly moved. By her own loneliness, Helene wondered, or by the idea of her generous heart? Fanny blew her nose and caressed Cleo’s muzzle.

The doorbell rang. A little later Otta appeared to announce a visitor. Your friend the Baron, mademoiselle. He’s arrived with several suitcases. Shall I get a room ready for him?

Oh dear, did I forget that? Dear Otta, yes, please get a room ready, the gold room will be best. He’ll be staying some time, he wants to look around Berlin. Turning to Martha, Fanny said, He’s a painter, a real artist. Fanny opened her reddened eyes. The ash on her cigar was getting long. She looked around for something. She had lost track of the ashtray and knocked the ash off the cigar on to the plate of poppyseed cake. The Baron tried his luck in Paris, now he’s come here. It’s only here he thinks he can paint to his heart’s content. If only! These days everyone wants to found a club and be head of it. Fanny gave herself a little shake. Only recently, she said, she had met a lively little man who talked a lot about himself and had made a name for himself too, an artist who rejected any notion of meaningful content in his work. It was just the outer form he valued, the artist’s way of life, recognition and of course followers. Yes, he founded a club and made himself head of it. He was in earnest, that was what surprised Fanny. There must have been something about the encounter, she said, that displeased her in retrospect. Perhaps it was his claim to have a large following who loved, indeed idolized him.

The girls looked up, curious to see the visitor. Martha and Helene had never met an aristocrat in person before. But it soon turned out in conversation that he wasn’t a baron, that was only his surname: Baron, Heinrich Baron.

He didn’t have much of anything and in particular he didn’t have much money. What little he did have, he would like to share with a pretty young girl who would model for him and get him drawing and drawing until he dropped. The Baron was a small man; any man the same height as Helene wasn’t tall. His forehead was high, his hair sparse, with a parting from his hairline to the back of his head. She liked his eyes. Their sad, lost expression easily inspired confidence and yes, they could make a young girl like Helene seem larger, more important.

Even if Helene didn’t quite like the way the Baron’s eyes lingered on her, to be the object of his attention promised her some protection from tall Erich, who could hardly find a moment now when they wouldn’t be disturbed if he manoeuvred Helene into a dark corner, and while Fanny had popped into the kitchen to look for Otta and Martha was working at the hospital, and there was no one around to see it but Cleo with her watchful eyes and the trustful wagging of her tail, he put a hand on her breast and stuck his fat, wet tongue into her ear, breathing heavily as he moved it around inside. As soon as Helene, holding her breath in alarm — for it never occurred to her to cry out — heard first from the light padding of Cleo’s paws that Fanny was on her way back from the kitchen, and then Fanny’s own footsteps were audible, Erich would let go of her as suddenly as he had seized her and stroll easily away to meet Fanny. Why didn’t she get her tennis racket, he asked, and go to Grünewald with him? He had borrowed a car and he knew she liked driving.

One day the Baron took off his glasses, cleaned them and ran his hand lightly over his high forehead. He asked Helene if she would like to earn a little something. Helene felt flattered; no artist had ever wanted to draw her before. She also felt shy and ashamed. Who, aside from Martha, had ever seen her naked?

Shame was for other girls, not for beauties like her, said the Baron out loud from the other end of the room where they had agreed to meet, on a Sunday morning when no one was going to church or even thinking of God. He hoped that this remark would bring Helene out from behind the screen. She wasn’t being asked to show herself for nothing, she’d be paid for it. The Baron waved a banknote. He didn’t mind that her breasts were tiny, he took it as a sign of her youth. He liked her blonde hair. He laughed: why, she was still just a child. He liked that, and he drew and drew, though he never did drop from exhaustion. Helene felt tired. After several weeks he told her she was an enchantress who looked different every day, she helped him to see in a new way. The Baron said she presented him with new eyes daily. He gave her newly minted coins and banknotes fresh from the printer in the Reichsmark currency, superseding the Rentenmark notes first issued in 1923, and to Helene they seemed like tickets to a new life of her own choosing.

She went to the pharmacist’s during the day now, she showed how discreet she could be there, and in the evening she undressed for the Baron who regarded her as both an enchantress and a child, but in whose presence she felt like a woman for the first time. She didn’t let him know that. After all, she felt that way because of the sense of shame and the excitement, not because of the assessing look with which he walked around her, asked her to sit down, to lie down, to hold her arm at a certain angle, to move her left leg a little further, yes, to spread her legs like that; and then, quite soon, he contracted tendonitis. Helene couldn’t help being reminded of those dragons who lived among rocks and ate virgins. Not that she felt guilty in any way; she was sorry for him. He couldn’t hold his charcoal any more, Helene wasn’t asked to undress again. So she no longer earned her share of what little money he did have, but worked longer hours at the pharmacy instead.

In the evening, when she came home from the pharmacy, Helene brought back a small box of white powder and placed it on Fanny’s bedside table without a word, as evidence that she was trustworthy. Leontine provided for Martha’s needs, if reluctantly, and it was only on rare occasions, when a good opportunity offered, that Helene brought some morphine back from the pharmacy for her sister. The Baron sat on the chaise longue in his room in the Berlin apartment, waiting for Helene with his sad, lost eyes. Helene was glad he just looked at her and didn’t touch. All the women around her were involved in relationships. Helene didn’t feel too young for that any more, it was just that she couldn’t make up her mind. She bandaged the Baron’s arm and put cold and warm compresses on his tendon. He gave her a bunch of bright yellow daisies, which she happily accepted. As she put the flowers in a vase she imagined that they were late roses and wondered how she would have felt if Clemens the pharmacist had given them to her. Helene wanted to be in love, to know all the boundless ardour and the fears that she supposed went with that condition. Was this all there was to it, a tingling sensation in the pit of her stomach, a trembling below her breasts? She had to smile. She couldn’t agree with Fanny’s belief that Clemens was one of her suitors. The gaunt pharmacist — Helene thought of him all the time when she had a day off — wouldn’t look Fanny or any other woman in the eye a moment longer than necessary. He didn’t watch any of them walking away either, he never said a word more than he had to. Only when his wife came into the pharmacy with two or three of their five children clinging to her skirts, to fetch something or ask him a question, her round face red with cold and her big blue eyes shining, did the pharmacist’s face open up and then he came to life. He would kiss his wife and hug his children as if he hardly ever saw them.

The apothecary did not come from a prosperous family; he worked hard for his money and still had debts against the pharmacy. If Fanny thought of him as a friend it might be because she didn’t realize how important money was to him. Helene typed his orders, letters and accounts for him. He showed her the consistencies to which fats and acids could be mixed, taught her what she needed to know about the reactions of bases with acids, and finally lent her a big book to read at home. Helene knew that this information might come in useful for any future medical studies of hers, and she mastered all the knowledge that came her way. She made it her habit to pack up five of the woodruff-flavoured sweets called May leaves for the pharmacist every evening, and if the big jar holding them was empty to take raspberry and violet-flavoured sweets out of the little jar instead. His children liked them. Helene did his accounts, she mixed ointments, and she stayed in the pharmacy after closing time when he hurried home to his wife and children. Abstracting drugs was easy. After a while Helene recognized the signatures and stamps of the various doctors; she knew who prescribed what for whom and where she could add a nought to the orders. Two grams of cocaine became twenty, but only very occasionally did she make one gram of morphine into ten or a hundred. She took the orders herself and she knew when the supplier came. She arranged the jars and boxes herself too, signed receipts for the substances, weighed them out. The pharmacist knew he could trust Helene. She relieved him of responsibility and of part of his work as well. When she ground crystals to powder and put them into capsules, or poured liquids into small bottles, all she needed was brief instructions and a fleeting smile. In the course of time Helene also learned to mix alcohol with expensive active agents and to calculate the mixture of bases and acids for tinctures, so that she didn’t have to pester the pharmacist with questions any more.

But the pharmacist’s smile was too fleeting. A gentle tingling in the pit of her stomach, a quivering sensation beneath her breasts, did not yet kindle any fire, did not provide Helene with the relationship that she thought was her due by now.

The Baron flattered her and his attentive eyes watched her, but he missed every opportunity, however good it was, to reach out to Helene.

Early one evening they were all sitting together. Martha had laid her head on Leontine’s lap and gone to sleep, Fanny was arguing with Erich over how to spend the rest of the evening and Helene was reading the new translation of Le Rouge et le Noir. The Baron was sitting in an armchair beside Helene, sipping a glass of absinthe and listening.

Leontine excused Martha and herself, and made an elaborate business of getting to her feet, while Martha complained that her bones, her nerves, even the roots of her hair all hurt. Leontine had to half carry Martha, half support her to the bed they shared. As soon as the two of them had left the room Erich jumped up, suddenly in vigorous mood. The night was young yet, he said, but not for long, and he wanted to start out at once. Fanny held him back by his shirt. Erich shook her off. Oh, take me with you, she begged. Doors slammed.

Suddenly Helene was alone with the Baron; she went on reading about Julien Sorel and how he offered to leave Madame Rénal’s house, apparently to save the honour of the lady of his heart but to save their love too, and how the lady then rose, prepared for anything. Was this not like the moment when the distance between the Baron and Helene would disappear entirely, would melt away? He had only to put out his hand, aroused by the strange passion that seemed even greater here than on the pages of the book. But when he did raise his hand, it was only to place it on the arm of his chair between himself and Helene. He was holding his glass in his other hand, took the last sip and topped it up. Helene felt her impatience turning to annoyance. She stopped reading.

Would you like a drink too, Helene?

She nodded, although she didn’t want one. Julien would never have asked anything so mundane. Helene’s eyes fell on the first page: The truth! The bitter truth! Helene guessed why Stendhal quoted that cry of Danton’s. Undeterred, the Baron poured a small glass for Helene, drank to her and asked if she didn’t want to go on with her book. Perhaps he had noticed her hesitation, for he started telling her his own story, talking with a certain pleasure. He had lived in France, he said, he spoke French fluently, but he had never found time to read this particular novel. How grateful he was that Helene had opened his eyes to that world too. Helene felt rising weariness and only half-heartedly suppressed a yawn. A virgin should be a virgin should be a virgin. She did go on reading, but with no enjoyment and she soon felt it was a strain. Her cheeks, only recently flushed with expectation, turned pale. A headache was rising from the nape of her neck. When the grandfather clock in the corridor struck ten, Helene closed the book.

Didn’t she want to read any more? The Baron seemed surprised.

No. Helene stood up, her throat dry. The taste of the absinthe made her feel slightly sick. She just wanted to be in her bed, and she hoped that Martha and Leontine would be fast asleep in the room they all shared.

Spring flew past and nothing woke or came to life. Helene’s nineteenth birthday was in June, on the longest day. Still not twenty-one, but old enough, as Fanny and Martha thought, to go to the White Mouse club with them for the first time. Fanny gave Helene a narrow envelope containing a voucher, made out in her wonderfully sloping handwriting, for a girls’ course in grammar-school education, at classes held in Marburger Strasse. The course was to begin in September and would fit in perfectly with Helene’s work at the pharmacy, since all the classes were in the evening. For some inexplicable reason Fanny had headed the voucher On Probation, underlining this all-embracing title, and it seemed to Helene as if, by that, she meant to point to those invisible pitfalls that her kind gesture must not gloss over.

Helene thanked her, but Fanny just looked at her sternly and began talking to Martha about the first beauty contest on German soil, to take place next year. Fanny thought that Martha definitely ought to enter.

I’m just bones and a bundle of nerves, said Martha, exhausted.

Oh, come on, replied Fanny, people see you better from outside. Look at yourself. Fanny put her long hand on the nape of Martha’s neck. Helene had to look away.

On a whim, and to annoy the Baron, Leontine cut Helene’s hair short that afternoon, level with her earlobes, and shaved away the rim of hair left in the nape of her neck with a knife. How light her head felt now!

In honour of the day, said Leontine, and got Helene to kiss her by way of thanks. To think that Helene would ever be so close to her own earlobes! Could she, Leontine, kiss those earlobes? Helene merely touched Leontine’s cheeks briefly with hers, her kisses flew into the air above Leontine’s shoulders, two, three, four, only Helene’s nose touched her friend’s ears. How did Leontine manage to smell as she once had in Lusatia, even today?

During the hair-cutting operation, the Baron kept passing the open doorway of the bathroom, putting his head round the door on a variety of threadbare pretexts and uttering wails of dismay. He couldn’t bear to watch, he cried, one hand going to his flies, barely in time to cover himself. It was a sin and a shame!

Martha gave Helene a knee-length dress of satin and chiffon that she had worn herself last season. It had originally been Fanny’s. Helene would be tall enough to wear it now, that was true. But Helene wasn’t as thin as Fanny and Martha. Without hesitating, Leontine said she would let out the dress at the seams and asked for a needle. In less than half an hour the dress fitted Helene perfectly. Out of the corner of her eye, Helene saw the Baron bending down to pick up her hair from the floor. He laid the long golden tresses over his arm and left the bathroom almost unnoticed, taking them with him. Fanny announced that she felt both too old and too young for satin. But the dress was just the thing for Helene, Fanny added, and she didn’t look again once Helene had the dress on. Presumably the grammar-school course and the dress must seem to her a good way of getting rid of Helene.

A summer night, the air was warm, a breeze was rising. Was Helene a little uneasy about her new hairstyle? She put on the hat that had come to Bautzen from Breslau along with their great-uncle’s legacy, the cloche hat like those all the women wore now, except that hers was made of velvet and set with small paste gemstones.

Fanny went ahead with Lucinde and the Baron; Leontine and Martha took Helene between them and linked arms with her. The scent of lime blossom wafted in their faces. Helene was wearing a transparent organza scarf instead of a jacket. The wind was pleasantly cool on her throat.

Two white-faced people stood at the entrance of the White Mouse; their make-up didn’t tell you for sure whether they were men or women. These doorkeepers unsmilingly negotiated the admission of guests. Those they knew were welcomed, strangers were turned away. Fanny was recognized and had a confidential word with one of the two doorkeepers, no doubt saying that the Baron, Lucinde and the young ladies were in her party. The doorkeeper was happy with that and opened the door for them with a gesture of invitation. The bar was not particularly large; guests stood crowded close together. Further forward, near a stage, there were tables with guests sitting at them. The days were gone when the famous Anita Berber performed her Dance of Vice and Horror here, a spectacle that was also called a Dance of Death; it was said that she now danced in a real theatre but didn’t appear often. However, all the guests could still imagine her on this stage. Their eyes kept going to the red curtains as if they thought she might appear at any moment and perform. Everyone had read how her lover stole from her in Vienna and abandoned her, thereafter travelling to America, where he was reported to have married four women within a single year. The latest rumour was that he had died soon after returning to Hamburg.

So there was no Anita Berber, but instead three musicians soon gathered on the stage, a trombonist, a clarinettist and a trumpeter. And while Helene still thought that the long-drawn-out notes were just tuning up, some of the guests began dancing. Helene was pushed on through the crowd, Fanny handed in her cape at the cloakroom and, without asking, removed Helene’s hat. Lucinde ordered champagne and glasses. They whispered, wasn’t that Margo Lion, standing over there among a cluster of people? The Baron’s eyes were turned only on Helene; they clung to her, to her face, her shoulders, her hands. His glances made her feel both safe and uncomfortable. The bare nape of her neck was probably a challenge to him, and not unwelcome, as Helene said to herself, but very exciting. Suddenly she felt breath on her shoulder and the Baron said, in his soft voice that almost squeaked when he tried to make it sound firm: Helene, you’re losing your scarf. Helene looked down at herself, at a loss, and then at the Baron, who seemed to her even smaller than usual tonight. Once again his lips approached; he was almost kissing her throat. I can see the little dimples in your shoulders, they’re sending me crazy.

Helene couldn’t help laughing. Someone pushed her gently in the back.

You’d better put that scarf round your shoulders again or other men will discover you.

She supposed the Baron was trying to claim rights to her bare shoulders. Helene turned. Fanny and Lucinde stood behind her; they had met Bernard and a friend of his. Fanny told her friends and her nieces to take a glass each from the tray. It was lucky that this club was so noisy. Helene didn’t want to answer the Baron; she draped the scarf casually over her elbows. Batting her false eyelashes was exciting too, and she had no objection at all if other men saw her little dimples.

Leontine greeted a young man and introduced him to her: his name was Carl Wertheimer. The music was so loud now that Leontine had to shout, and the young man put his hands over his ears. He was one of her pathology students, Leontine shouted, he’d smuggled himself into her course, he was really studying philosophy and languages — Latin, Greek — and modern literature too, he was obviously going to be a poet. Carl Wertheimer shook his head vigorously. Never. Oh yes, said Leontine, laughing, she’d once seen him standing in a group of students reciting a poem, she was sure he’d written it himself. Carl Wertheimer seemed bewildered by all this. He was a perfectly ordinary student, he said, and if he did quote Ovid or Aristotle, that wasn’t to be compared with the efforts of the rising generation of writers to emulate them. Anyway, he added, he wouldn’t have the courage to confess to such attempts of his own in the presence of these clever ladies. Leontine ran her hand over his hair in a sisterly way, she made him seem like a small child. Helene looked searchingly at him; his eyes were level with hers, his slender physique was that of a boy. He was probably about Helene’s own age. She looked at him for a moment like someone who might be hers, but all his attention was given to Leontine. It was obvious that Carl Wertheimer looked up to her and not just because she appeared to be several centimetres taller than he was. Leontine was an unusual woman and no doubt he valued her as a teacher; perhaps he was a little in love with her.

Other musicians joined the three on stage, also playing trombones, clarinets and trumpets. The notes dragged along, the beat lurched and swayed. To Helene’s surprise, more and more people around her began to dance, and soon she could hardly see the dance floor as the parquet under her feet vibrated in time to the music. Fanny and Bernard were ahead of everyone else, Lucinde took Bernard’s friend’s hand, even Martha and Leontine mingled with the dancers and only the Baron held back. He stood guard over the tray of glasses, his back to the wall, and he never took his eyes off Helene, who still stood there undecided. A hand was laid gently on her arm. Would she like to dance, asked a clean-shaven man; he took the glass from her hand and led her away with him. He held tight to Helene with one hand, as if he had to be careful, as if the music might lure her away; it was slow at first, then fast, and his other hand, as if by chance, touched her bare arm while they danced. The music spared nothing, no living creature, it went through her, took every particle of her and transformed the room into fragments of time. A moment ago the place had been quiet, motionless, but now it was in uproar, or so it seemed to Helene, an uproar that not only set every mol-ecule and every organ swaying but strained the frames of the dancers’ bodies and the bounds of the room itself to the utmost without breaking them apart. The music stretched, filled the place with a dull glow, glittering softly, a spray of delicate melodies no longer observing ordinary musical rules; it bent the bodies of the dancers, doubled them up, raised them again, reeds blowing in the wind. Once the clean-shaven man put his hand on Helene’s hips and she jumped, but he only wanted to keep her from colliding with another dancing couple. Helene looked around, she saw Leontine’s throat, her short dark hair; Helene moved sideways, making her way past the bodies that bent towards her and then turned away, tracing a winding path through the dancers, and the clean-shaven man followed every step she took, past other dancers, ducking below their arms, until Helene caught Martha’s hand and saw Leontine’s smile. The clean-shaven man gestured frantically, looked indignant, did a handstand and landed on his feet again. Helene couldn’t help laughing. She tried to follow the beat, her shoulders and arms moved, the people around her writhed and swirled in the music, became entangled with each other, trod on one another’s feet. The music reminded Helene of being on a swing: if someone gave you a push the impetus of the swing carried everything away with it, made straight for its target, but in the next bar it began to falter. It made you swing and stretch your legs first this way, then that, and a reeling, rolling, spinning movement began, an elliptical circling, ever-decreasing with its own logic. Martha’s head was nodding alarmingly, her hair was coming loose, she flung out her arms in Leontine’s direction as if she were drowning. Helene saw her glazed eyes, their gaze veiled by night, unable to focus on anyone now, unable to recognize anyone. She waved to Martha, but now Martha was leaning on Leontine with a drunken, rather foolish smile on her face. The trumpet cut in strongly, provided impetus, the dancers began sweating, the women’s bare arms and shoulders gleamed in the narrow beams of light cast by the small lamps. Next moment Helene couldn’t see the violet blue of Leontine’s dress any more and Martha’s maudlin smile had disappeared; a new rhythm began. Helene looked around, but she could see neither Leontine nor Martha. Meanwhile, she caught sight of the back of her clean-shaven dancing partner, now dancing with another young woman.

Helene found herself alone in the midst of the excited crowd. The music surrounded her, possessed her, trying to permeate her and leave her at the same time. Helene flung out her arms and her legs. Anxiety took over her body; she knew none of the dance movements, but she did still know where the floor was. Even if the floor gave way, her feet were landing on it and rising up again, so feet and floor depended on each other. Helene tried to reach the edge of the crowd, where she thought the Baron might be, although she couldn’t see his hat, nor could she see any of the rest of her party, but the dancers pushed her further and further into the crowd, and her legs never stopped following the rhythm. There was nowhere you could more easily disappear than in the midst of all these dancers. Helene gave herself up to the dance; the sound of the clarinets chased her feet on, the musical beat was catching up with her, she was punching holes in the air with her arms.

A hand reached for her; she didn’t know the man. His face was covered with white make-up, his lips were almost black, and Helene danced. With every dance her partner’s face and figure changed. Soon Leontine and Martha reappeared. Martha smiled at her as she danced; perhaps, just perhaps, that smile was really aimed in her direction, meant for the music, for her brief disappearance, but Helene wasn’t trying to get near Martha any more. Someone else’s glance had been following Helene for some time in the darkness near the platform, from one of the little tables with the small green lamps. Helene recognized Carl Wertheimer and was glad that he had finally noticed her. Perhaps he was just curious to find out what Leontine’s friends were like. His glance was attentive, but it didn’t bother her. Carl Wertheimer still wore his coat; its smooth fur collar shone, perhaps he was about to leave. He was smoking a short, slender pipe. His eyes kept going to the other dancers, to Leontine, then back to Helene. In spite of his youth, Helene couldn’t help thinking, his features were grave and dignified.

The clarinet called, Helene leaped after it; the trombone pushed at her and Helene leaned back; the trumpet beckoned her on, but Helene hesitated.

Soon after that she twisted her ankle, stumbled and lost her balance. She grabbed Martha’s shoulder to keep herself from falling and leaned on it. Martha must have mistaken her for someone else; she roughly shook off Helene’s hand. The little strap of Helene’s shoe was broken; there was nothing she could do but hold the shoe in her hand and make her way through the sweet-sour odour of the dancing crowd. When she reached the stage she turned left. As soon as she was away from the stuffy warmth of the dancers and their hot clutches she felt a cool draught coming from the darkness. Were there windows somewhere? She couldn’t see any. Perhaps someone had opened the door to let in some air. Helene looked over the dancers’ heads; a long way off, at the back of the room, she saw Fanny’s white face. Fortunately there was no sign of the Baron’s hat. Would she like a drink? Someone jostled her. Helene said a quick no, thank you, and hurried on. She passed figures exhausted by the night’s revels and pale early-morning faces. A shiver ran down her back, and unexpectedly she was looking into the eyes of Carl Wertheimer, the thin-faced young man.

Excuse me, he said, I think you’re a friend of Leontine’s. His voice was remarkably deep for one so young. Her gaze fell on his fur collar. It shimmered so beautifully that she would have liked to stroke the fur.

Helene nodded; of course he didn’t know her name. So she said: Helene, I’m Helene Würsich.

Wertheimer, Carl Wertheimer. Fräulein Leontine was kind enough to introduce me to her friends at the beginning of the evening.

You’re her student.

He nodded and offered her his arm. Do you need help?

I do indeed, my shoe’s broken. Helene held the shoe out to him. She thought of Martha, looked round in alarm, and saw her sister among the dancers with her arms round Leontine. It almost looked as if Martha were going to kiss Leontine in front of everyone. A slight uneasiness, a momentary revulsion overcame Helene; it was not so much the faint sense of being shut out as fear of this stranger’s discovering everything, of revelation of the network in which she too belonged, as Martha’s sister and ally. Helene wanted to divert Wertheimer’s attention.

Have you known Dr Leontine long?

Our aunt invited us to stay. She has lots of friends. Helene made a vague gesture. I’m afraid I have to leave now.

Of course. May I accompany you? I don’t think you ought to be limping home alone through the empty streets.

Yes, please. I’d like that. I’m afraid, she said, thinking of the pigeons picking seeds out of the ashes in the Cinderella story, that I don’t have either ashes or pigeons to lend me charms. Then she realized that her ears were burning; she had meant to suggest not so much charms as virginal patience.

Helene said goodbye to her aunt. Fanny didn’t even deign to look at the young student Wertheimer, but assured Helene that Otta would open the door to her when she got home.

It was light now outside. The birds were twittering softly to greet the summer day, although it had dawned long ago and the street lights were out. A cab was waiting for custom. Clearly people must be beginning to go to work. A newspaper boy stood on the corner offering the Morgenpost and the Querschnitt.

The Querschnitt on the street so early in the morning, said Carl, smiling and shaking his head.

Helene was enjoying her encounter with Wertheimer, and as they asked each other the first tentative questions about their lives she did not tell him how close they were to where she was staying. One foot shod, the other bare and touching the paving stones, Helene felt the sticky surface of the street. The lime trees had been dropping their nectar overnight.

Come, let’s conceal ourselves more closely… Wertheimer looked enquiringly at Helene to see if she recognized his quotation from the poet Else Laske-Schüler.

Life lies in all our hearts. Quickly, casually, Helene tossed the next line back to him.

As if in coffins. Wertheimer happily completed the second verse of the poem. But Helene said no more; she just smiled.

What is it? he asked. Won’t you go on?

I’ve forgotten how the rest of it goes.

I don’t believe that. He looked surprised and a little sorry, but she mollified him.

You say it so cheerfully, but ‘The End of the World’ is a sad poem, don’t you think?

You call it sad? It’s optimistic, Helene! What can be fuller of promise than devotion, a kiss, a longing that embraces us and brings us to the point of death?

You believe she was thinking of God when she wrote it?

Not at all, the divine is closer to her. How does the poem begin? Why, with many doubts! She speaks of weeping as if the good Lord God were dead. But if she believed in God she’d assume he was immortal, so it’s a double rejection of faith; she doesn’t believe in the good Lord any more than an evil Lord or any other kind of god. Is the death of God supposed to make the world weep for him or because it’s rid of him?

Helene looked at Wertheimer. She mustn’t forget to close her lips. Didn’t Martha keep telling her to shut her mouth or insects would fly into it? She had never heard anyone discuss a poem like this.

But wasn’t the poem hers, all hers? Waxing enthusiastic, Helene was talking away now, for her poem rather than her life, although with a man like Wertheimer you couldn’t draw sharp distinctions between the two.

Laske-Schüler doesn’t regale herself on God, she doesn’t regale herself on mankind and their sufferings either, she grants them only a kiss before dying. Believe me, her own mortality, looking her in the face — whether she’s to die of longing and in tears or not — human mortality, her understanding that it’s inevitable, all that’s clearly opposed to God’s immortality.

Do you always read poems backwards?

Only if I meet someone who insists on linearity.

The young man was going to take the tram or a bus and turned the corner.

So you, with your Latinate terms — regaling yourself on them, in fact! — you accuse me of insisting on linearity? I like to take a winding path myself, but I won’t insist on anything, certainly not to you. There was severity in Wertheimer’s words, but the next moment mischief was sparkling in his eyes. How about all that cultural and scientific stuff? Tell me, don’t you think all our efforts are shocking presumption? Doesn’t a club where anyone can be chairman have the biggest membership? Is Dada a wastepaper basket for art?

Helene thought about it. What’s wrong with differences, can you tell me that? It was an honest question, after all, Helene thought. Who was bothered by all the clubs, so long as everyone could found one and go there as often as he wanted?

At the Kurfürstendamm they let the first tram pass; it was crowded, only brave souls would clamber aboard and their conversation would admit no pause, wouldn’t be interrupted even for the courage to try a kiss.

You know Büchner’s Lenz, what is Lenz suffering from, Helene?

Helene saw the curiosity with which Carl awaited her answer. She hesitated. From being different. Is that what you mean? But difference doesn’t always cause suffering.

It doesn’t? Suddenly Carl Wertheimer seemed to know what he was getting at; he wasn’t waiting for her answer any more. You’re a woman, I’m a man — do you think that means happiness?

Helene had to laugh. She shrugged her shoulders. What else, Herr Wertheimer?

Yes, of course, you’ll say that, Helene. At least, I hope so. That’s permitted. But only because happiness and suffering aren’t mutually exclusive. Far from it. Suffering embraces the idea of happiness, keeps it safe inside itself, so to speak. The idea of happiness can never be lost in suffering.

Except that the idea of happiness and happiness itself are different things. Helene felt that she was walking slowly, hobbling along. Briefly, she noticed how her feet hurt. But Lenz has everything, his clouds are rosy, the heavens shine down — everything that others only dream of.

Helene and Carl boarded a bus going east and sat down. The wind was blowing in their faces and Carl put his coat round Helene’s shoulders to keep her warm.

But that makes Büchner’s Lenz suffer, objected Carl. What are the clouds or the mountains to him if he doesn’t win Pastor Oberlin over?

Win him over? Helene thought she had spotted something vague in Carl’s chain of thought; she was paying close attention and couldn’t help noticing. Perhaps he had misunderstood her.

What brings you and your sister to Berlin? Just a visit to your aunt?

Helene nodded firmly. A long visit; we’ve been here three years now. Helene snuggled her chin into the fur collar of his coat. How soft it was, how nice it smelled; a fur collar in summer. Martha works at the Jewish Hospital. I used to be a nurse too, I passed my exams while we were still living in Bautzen, but it isn’t easy for a nurse to get a job here in Berlin if she’s very young and doesn’t have any references. Helene’s feet were sore. She wondered whether to tell him that today was her birthday and she was going to begin an evening course in grammar-school education for girls, adding that she would like to study at college after that, but she decided not to. After all, her birthday was eight hours in the past and the morning sun now shining in her face, the first summer sunlight since the solstice, was more important while she felt that fur collar against her cheek.

So young? Carl looked at her, estimating her age. Helene’s cheeks were glowing. Her feet were cold now, one shoe lay on her lap, her dress, drenched from all that dancing, stuck to her back and made her shiver, but her cheeks were burning and she smiled as she returned Carl’s glance.

He leaned over to her. Helene thought he was going to kiss her, but he only whispered softly in her ear: If I dared, I’d give you a kiss.

Helene drew her thin scarf more closely round her shoulders. She glanced through the leaves of the plane trees and saw the shops they were passing. Oh, she cried, jumping up, we have to get out here.

But we’ve only gone one stop. Wertheimer was following her down the steps of the bus and out into the street.

Helene was limping, her unshod right leg much shorter than her left leg now.

I’d carry you, Helene, but perhaps you wouldn’t like it.

What makes you think that, she asked, rolling her eyes. The night had left her in high spirits and the bright morning made her feel braver. Contentedly, she put her arms round Carl Wertheimer. Surprised, he hesitated for a moment. But he had hardly put his own arms round her to pick her up when she gave him a quick kiss — his cheek was rough — and then, in friendly fashion, pushed him away.

The sun’s already shining. Helene stopped, leaned on Carl Wertheimer’s shoulder and took off her other shoe. Don’t worry, these paving stones are warm.

She was several steps ahead of him now and, as he tried to catch up, she began to run. She told herself he would kiss her goodbye. Suddenly it seemed to Helene as if she could see right through people and knew exactly what action would lead to what result. She could handle people, all of them, pull the strings as if they were marionettes, in particular she could handle Carl Wertheimer, who she knew was behind her, whose steps were coming closer and closer, whose hand she felt on her shoulder next moment. She stopped outside the apartment and turned to Carl Wertheimer. He took her hand, drew her into the entrance of the building and laid his hand against her cheek.

So soft, he said. Helene liked the touch of his hand, she thought she could encourage her new friend, put her own hand on his, pressing it to her face, and kissed its roughened back. Cautiously, she raised her eyes to his. One of Carl’s eyelids was fluttering, only one, like a frightened young bird. Perhaps he’d never kissed a girl before. He drew her towards him. She liked the sensation of his mouth on her hair. Helene didn’t know what to do with her hands; his coat seemed to get in the way, it was too bulky. She put one hand to his temples, his cheekbones, his eye sockets, seeking out the fluttering eyelid with one finger. Then, protectively, she laid her fingers on the lid as if to calm it down. Helene felt a stitch in her side and took a deep breath. She took care to breathe regularly, as regularly as possible. In Carl Wertheimer’s embrace she was neither short nor tall, his hands on her bare neck warmed her and brought gooseflesh out on her bare arms. Helene had to give herself a little shake. This man’s touch was still unknown to her, but her desire was all the more familiar for that. A blackbird sang its loud song, a second drowned it out, first trilling, then whistling — its notes were a triad in a lower register than the first bird, then the two blackbirds began singing in competition. Helene spluttered with excitement, which he might take as laughter. Then she felt his grave gaze resting on her and her laughter died down. She felt ashamed of herself, she was afraid he might have noticed the sense of omnipotence that she had just been feeling, but now there was nothing left of it, it was an empty husk once the kernel had dropped to the ground, leaving nothing but the appearance of arrogance or even vanity, and he wouldn’t think much of that. She wondered what he wanted. What he wanted in general and what he wanted of her. Her heart was in her mouth. They had to part now.

Proudly, she told him that they had recently acquired a telephone.

Carl Wertheimer didn’t ask what the number was. It was as if he hadn’t heard her. He watched her go and waved. She waved back. Her hands were warm.

As she raised the heavy brass ring on Fanny’s fine front door to knock — for she had firmly determined not to look round at Carl again — and as Otta opened the door in her cap and apron, fully dressed already, Helene doubted whether Carl would telephone. Perhaps he wanted an affair, perhaps just a kiss and he’d already had that. Very likely that was all and he didn’t want any more.

There was an aroma of coffee in the air, the grandfather clock struck, it was six-thirty. Helene heard the familiar clatter of cutlery and china from the kitchen; the cook would be brewing the coffee there, already preparing breakfast in spite of the absence of her mistress and the rest of them, cutting up poppyseed cake, stirring the porridge that Fanny liked as soon as she felt able to eat something in the morning. Helene did not feel at all tired. Stepping lightly as if her feet were still dancing to the music of trumpet and clarinet, she went out on the veranda and dropped into one of the low upholstered chairs. Her hair, which hardly came down as far as her nose now, smelled of smoke. She felt the back of her neck; she could move her head so easily without her long hair. She felt tempted to make rapid movements, and if she shook her head suddenly her hair fell over her face. Helene pulled off her false eyelashes. Her eyes were burning from last night’s cigarette smoke. As she put the false eyelashes on the table, she thought it would be nice if she could put her eyes down beside them. Cleo jumped out of her basket under the table, wagging her stumpy little tail and licking Helene’s hand. The dog’s tongue tickled. Helene thought of the goats in their garden at home in Tuchmacherstrasse, the goats that she had sometimes milked when she was a child. As she ran her fingers from top to bottom of the udder, its skin had felt rough against the palms of her hands and she had to wash her hands thoroughly, in hot water and with plenty of soap because the slightly rancid smell clung tenaciously. Rancid goat. She had escaped all that, thought Helene in relief, and as she settled comfortably into the soft upholstery of the chair she was only slightly and sweetly ashamed of feeling glad. What was the real point of escaping, Helene wondered, chasing through your life so fast? Be consistent, be consistent, Helene whispered to herself, and as she heard herself whispering she said out loud, in a firm voice, the concluding words of Büchner’s Lenz: Inconsistent, inconsistent. Helene patted the dog’s firm and curly coat. What a sweet little creature you are. Cleo’s floppy ears were soft and silky. Helene kissed the dog on her long muzzle; she had never kissed Cleo before, but this morning she just couldn’t help it.

The unexpected advent of Carl Wertheimer on the scene passed largely unnoticed in Fanny’s apartment. He did not call Helene on the telephone, but a messenger brought her flowers. Helene was surprised, alarmed, happy. She placed her hand protectively round the flowers, round the air encircling them, which seemed too dense to carry their faint fragrance. Like a treasure, she carried the anemones to her room. She was alone there and felt glad that Martha would not be back until late. She wondered where he had found anemones still in bloom now. She looked at the flowers; their blue changed during the day and the delicate petals grew heavy.

The anemones faded that evening, but she wouldn’t let Otta take the flowers out of their vase. Helene couldn’t sleep. When she closed her eyes she saw only blue. Her excitement was caused by something she had never known before, an encounter with someone with whom she shared mutual ideas, a mutual curiosity and, indeed, as she confided to Martha, a mutual passion for literature.

Martha yawned on receiving this confidence. You mean in common, little angel, not mutual.

Helene knew clearly now that something unique had happened to her. She wouldn’t mind what Martha thought any more; her meeting with Carl was an incomparable experience, something she didn’t seem able to communicate to anyone like her sister.

When the bell finally rang on Sunday, and Helene heard Otta’s voice clearly and politely repeating his name as if it were a question — Carl Wertheimer? — Helene leaped to her feet, picked up the silk jacket that Fanny had only recently stopped wearing and given her, and followed Carl out into the summer morning.

They took the train to Wannsee and then walked to the smaller Stölpchensee nearby. Carl dared not hold her hand. A hare leaped along the woodland track ahead of them. The water of the lake below them glittered through the leaves, white sails swelled in the distance. Helene’s throat felt tight; she was suddenly afraid that she might start stammering, that her memory of the interests they shared and her delight in them would turn out to be a single occurrence, never to be repeated.

Then Carl started talking: Isn’t the enjoyment of nature for its own sake, the autocracy of the moment, as Lenz shows it to us, a true hymn of praise to life?

That sounds like sacrilege.

You mean doubt, Helene. Doubt is allowed, doubt isn’t sacrilege.

Perhaps you see it differently. It’s not like this for us Christians.

You’re Protestant, am I right? There was no mockery in Carl Wertheimer’s tone, so Helene nodded slightly. Suddenly what she said about her adherence to the Lutheran faith and its nature seemed invalidated, not because she remembered her mother’s atheism and her different origins, but because her God seemed so far away here. Büchner had routed him. Who wanted to recognize God as the Universal?

May I tell you something in confidence, Carl? Helene and Carl stopped where the path forked; to the right it went to the bridge, to the left deeper into the wood. They were still wondering which way to go when she told him what was weighing on her mind. You know, these last few years, since we’ve been in Berlin, I’ve felt ashamed whenever I thought about God, and I knew I’d forgotten him for days and weeks on end. We haven’t set foot in a church here.

And did you find a substitute?

What do you mean, Carl?

Has something given you pleasure? And can you believe in that?

Well, to be honest, I’ve never asked myself that question.

Carl clenched one hand into a fist and shook it at the sky: and he felt, he said, quoting Büchner again, as if he could crush the world between his teeth and spit it out into the Creator’s face: so Lenz swore, so he blasphemed.

Don’t laugh. You’re making fun of me.

Helene, I’m not making fun of you. I’d never dare do that. Carl controlled his merriment as well as he could.

Go on, laugh. It was through laughter that atheism got its grip on Lenz.

You think I’m an atheist? It isn’t as simple as that, Helene. It’s a fact that God doesn’t know anything about laughter. Isn’t that a pity? Carl put his hands in his trouser pockets.

I’d never have thought of confusing you with Lenz. Helene winked at him. At last she knew why she had been standing in front of the mirror with the lily-patterned rim for hours on end, practising winking one eye: it was for this moment. Then she turned serious again and looked sternly at Carl. I was going to tell you something in confidence.

I know, I’ll keep quiet. And Carl did stop talking.

It seemed an eternity before Helene could bring herself to break the silence.

I’m not ashamed any more, that’s what horrifies me. Do you understand? I haven’t been to church here, I’ve forgotten about God; for a long time I’ve felt ashamed when I remembered him. And now what? Nothing.

Let’s walk on. Carl chose the path leading to the bridge. Clouds were towering up, big white clouds sailing singly in the unchanging blue sky beyond them. On the other side of the bridge stood an inn with a garden. There was hardly an empty table in the garden, parties with sunshades and children were talking in loud voices, they too seemed to have forgotten about God. Carl found them a place. He said this was his table, well, once it had been his parents’ regular table, and when he came here by himself now and then it was his. Helene imagined that a life in which you and your parents went to an inn with a garden would be wonderful. Pointing to another table, Carl whispered to her that the painters often sat at that one. The magic of this world seemed to Helene so strange that she felt like standing up and leaving, but now Carl took her hand and told her she had a lovely smile, he’d like to see it often.

Carl Wertheimer was from a good family, prosperous and well educated. His father was a professor of astronomy, so in spite of the financial difficulties of the last few years, his son had been able to study. The waiter brought them raspberry sherbet to drink. Carl pointed to the north-east: his parents’ house was over there, he said, on the other bank. His two brothers had been reported missing in the war; the eldest had been killed and his belongings sent home, but his parents still refused to believe he was dead. Helene thought of her father, but she didn’t want to talk about him.

He himself hadn’t had to join the army, to his mother’s relief. His sister was finishing her university studies this year; she was the only woman studying physics. And she was getting married next year. Carl was obviously proud of his sister. He was the youngest, there was plenty of time for him, so his mother said. Carl clicked his tongue as if deploring this, although his eyes were twinkling and his regret seemed anything but serious. A sparrow came down to perch on their table, hopping back and forth, and pecking up crumbs left by the last occupants.

This glimpse of Carl’s peaceful world by the Wannsee aroused a vague sense of uneasiness in Helene. What could she set against that, what could she add to it? A wasp had fallen into her raspberry sherbet and was struggling for its life there.

Carl must have noticed that Helene, on the other side of the table, had fallen silent. He told her: your eyes are bluer than the sky. And when he had struggled to coax a difficult smile from her, perhaps he thought, she’s ashamed after all, she hasn’t forgotten her God. No wonder when I seize her hand. Probably to get her out of her difficulty, he said, quoting Büchner yet again: My love, is there some terrible crack in your world?

Helene saw the mischief in his eyes and recognized that aspect of his character. It was as if she knew him a little now, and that in itself comforted her. Now he couldn’t stop rummaging around in his memories: To drop the subject of Lenz for a moment, may I advise you to let abstract words crumble to nothing in your mouth like mouldy mushrooms? Even Hofmannsthal recovered from his ennui. And what is it but ennui if a void stretching out before us fills us with discomfort?

There it was again, the idea of discomfort. Helene felt that his words were too importunate, something threatened to go wrong, the wasp in her raspberry sherbet tumbled down inside the glass, Helene felt a headache coming on. There was loud laughter at the next table. Helene had forgotten to answer Carl’s question.

I’d like to take you out in a boat. You can lie in the boat with the water rocking you, and you must look up at the sky. Will you promise me that? Carl waved to the waiter, asking for the bill.

There was a Mercedes cabriolet standing outside the inn, with people crowding round it, gaping, stroking, patting the carriage-work as if it were a horse. Helene was glad when she and Carl finally got to their feet, leaving the wasp to its own devices.

Carl took her hand now. His own was unexpectedly slender and firm. No leaden shadow, she thought, returning to that poem of Laske-Schüler’s, no leaden shadow heavy as the grave weighed her down now, the world was a long way from coming to an end. A clattering noise in the sky made them stop. Helene put her head back.

Can I tell you something in confidence too, Helene?

Go ahead. Helene shielded her eyes with her hand; the sunlight was dazzling. You have a weakness for aeroplanes, isn’t that so?

Carl took a step towards her. Junkers F 13 planes. She felt his breath against her throat as he spoke.

Without taking her hand from her brow, Helene lowered her head and her hand almost touched Carl’s eyebrows.

Carl stepped back again. I can’t talk when I’m so close to you. No, it wasn’t my weakness for planes I was going to tell you about. Carl stopped. Your mouth is beautiful. And I can’t think of a quotation. Why use someone else’s words anyway? I’m the one who would like to kiss you.

Some time, perhaps.

You mean next year? Did you know that Junkers are planning a flight across the Atlantic?

That’s failed often enough, said Helene, sounding knowledgeable.

All the way from Europe to America. But I can’t wait as long as that for your kiss.

Helene went ahead, pleased that Carl couldn’t see her smile. They walked in silence for a long time, deep in their own thoughts, each knowing the other was there. Helene was surprised now at the momentary sense of strangeness that she had felt at the inn, and hoped Carl hadn’t noticed. She felt far from strange with him at the moment. The man hiring out boats was sitting on a folding chair, reading the evening paper; passed on to him, perhaps, by one of his customers. He was sorry, he said, all the boats were out on the water, and when one came back he didn’t want to hire it out again. After eight no one goes rowing on the lake, he said. As they walked along the bank, taking off their shoes and surprised by the warmth that the sand had stored up during the day, Carl talked about the theatre. In a few brief words they had agreed on a shared preference for classical tragedies onstage and Romantic literature at home, but their understanding nods and agreements were mainly due to their impatience; they didn’t want to keep their distance from each other any more, they wanted to come close, they were in search of a way to bring what they were both thinking to its natural conclusion. Helene liked the reddish trunks of the pine trees here in the Mark Brandenburg; you didn’t see them at home, only in Berlin. The long needles felt pleasant between her fingers. Why did they always come in pairs? A fine little filament connected the two pine needles under their hard exterior. It seemed to her as if the evening sun were setting the woods on fire. The day was coming to a close, the pines gave off a heavy scent, Helene felt dazed; she wanted to sit down on the woodland floor and stay there. Carl crouched down beside her and said he wasn’t going to let her stay in the woods, there were wild animals here and she was too delicate for him to allow it.

Martha was very happy to know that Helene had a boyfriend, so that she herself could live even more openly with Leontine. But it was as if Carl Wertheimer’s appearance had robbed the sisters of their conversations. They no longer had anything to say to each other. Aunt Fanny’s apartment, which she had liked so much until now, seemed to Helene more and more unwelcoming every day. That was not so much because Fanny was taking one object after another to the pawnbroker’s, first the little samovar which, she said, she didn’t like as much as the big one, then the picture by Lovis Corinth, which she claimed she’d never liked — she had always felt the young woman with the hat repellent, she said, she’d rather have had his self-portrait with a skeleton — and finally the gramophone went; there was no denying the value of the gramophone, or the fact that she really did like it.

On many days Fanny sat with Erich on her little veranda at noon, arguing over plans for the day. When he rose to his feet because he’d had enough of her and would rather spend the rest of the day without her, she called after him in a loud voice that carried all over the ground-floor apartment: I wish I could feel an infatuation! Take me by storm, somebody!

It sounded both pleading and derisive, and Helene took care not to cross either Erich’s or Fanny’s path. She closed the door to her room. How sweet the hours she used to spend alone in the apartment had once been. But it seemed they were gone for ever, because whenever Helene came home someone was bustling about in the kitchen, someone else was shouting down the telephone, or sitting on the chaise longue and reading.

You don’t love me! The words rang through the rooms. Helene couldn’t help overhearing; the silence knew no mercy, it followed the long, slow, apparently never-ending definition of Fanny’s conjecture. Helene hurried along the corridor on tiptoe when she had to go to the bathroom. Only when Fanny was lying on the floor, claiming that she couldn’t live without love, did Erich reach his hand down to her. He pulled her up from the floor and pushed her into her bedroom ahead of him. Helene counted up her savings; they wouldn’t even rent an attic room for a month. The books for her classes were expensive, and Fanny made it clear that she couldn’t afford the money any more. Helene should be glad to have had the first two years of her course paid for her, she said; Fanny’s money was running out and, sad to say, she didn’t know what to do about it. Helene had stopped bringing drugs home from the pharmacy; it had proved impossible to forge a bond of confidence between her and her aunt, and Fanny’s kindness to Helene was wearing a little thin too. Sometimes Helene came into the apartment, Otta took her coat and Helene went into the living room to say hello to Fanny, but Fanny either did not look up from her book or pretended to be fast asleep, although a glass of steaming tea stood beside the chaise longue.

Nights in her narrow bed beside Leontine and Martha were a torment, since the pair never seemed to tire of their love and their lust. The Baron had begun writing Helene anxious letters. He saw her so seldom now, he said, his heart was both bleeding and freezing. His life was a poor thing without her. But the object of his affections did not reply. After her original bafflement in the face of his expectations, and his announcement of a love she did not share, Helene took to putting the letters she found pushed under the door of her room inside the lid of the big trunk that stood under her bed, still unopened. A first attempt by two Junkers to fly from Europe to America over the Atlantic had failed in August; the autumn storms and winter clouds were regarded as insuperable obstacles, so the next attempt to fly the Atlantic was postponed until spring. Carl and Helene were alone in waiting no longer.

Carl took Helene to the State Opera House, Unter den Linden. They heard Schreker’s The Singing Devil and stood applauding for twenty minutes, although shrill whistling from elsewhere in the audience rang in their ears, and while Helene’s hands hurt with clapping, she hoped Carl wouldn’t follow the crowd to the exits. But the inevitable happened. Outside the cloakroom, Helene asked Carl not to take her home yet. She wanted to walk a little way through the night first. Thick snowflakes were falling, but they hardly settled on the surface of the road, which was black as night. Carl and Helene walked past the Hotel Adlon. The snow melted on Helene’s tongue. Outside the entrance to the great hotel, handsome cars and a crowd of people suggested that some distinguished guest was expected to arrive.

You’re cold and tired. Let me take you home.

Please don’t. Helene stayed put. Carl put his hands inside her fur muff in search of warmth.

But we can’t just stand around here, said Carl.

I’ll come back to your lodgings with you. There, she had said it, just like that.

Carl drew his hands away from her. He couldn’t believe his ears. He had so often begged Helene to go back to his room, he had so often reassured her that he had all the keys and his landlady was hard of hearing. I’m glad, he said quietly and kissed her forehead.

On the way to Viktoria-Luise-Platz she insisted that they mustn’t phone her aunt. No one at Fanny’s apartment minded where she was; they probably wouldn’t even notice her absence. Helene knew Carl’s attic room. She had visited him before, but in the daytime. Now she hardly knew it again. The electric light made the colours look faded, his books were stacked on the floor, his bed was unmade. There was a smell of urine as if he hadn’t emptied his chamber pot. Carl had not been expecting her visit. Now he apologized and quickly put the bedspread on the bed. She could borrow one of his nightshirts, he said, and could he read something aloud to her? His voice was dry, his abrupt movements showed how important her presence here and perhaps her mere existence were to him.

Are you still reading Hofmannsthal? She took the nightshirt and sat down on his chair at the desk, with her coat still buttoned up.

He pointed to the books on the floor. I was reading Spinoza yesterday evening; in our class we’re comparing his ethics with Descartes and his dualist view of the world.

You haven’t told me anything about that yet. Helene looked suspiciously at Carl. She couldn’t wrinkle her smooth brow; the little lines that formed above her short nose if she did just looked funny.

Are you jealous? Carl teased her, although he must know that she meant it seriously and she really was jealous of his studies — not because she wanted to have him all for herself and didn’t want him to be studying, but because she would have liked to be studying too.

Your shoes are all wet, wait, I’ll take them off for you. Carl knelt down on the floor in front of her and removed her shoes. And your feet are cold, like ice. Don’t you have any winter boots? Helene shook her head. Wait a minute, I’ll get you some hot water, you need a footbath.

Carl disappeared and Helene heard him on the stairs. She looked at the nightshirt on her lap and took his absence as a request for her to undress. She draped her clothes over the back of the chair and rolled up her stockings in a ball, keeping nothing on but her new pair of knickers. In the corner under the window, Helene saw a terrarium with an orchid flowering in it. An orchid in bloom in an attic room, surrounded by the drab colours on which the electric light fell. She heard sounds on the stairs and quickly pulled the nightshirt over her head. It smelled of Carl. The second button from the top was missing, she did up the top button and held the nightshirt closed over the gap. Helene was trembling all over now. Carl brought in hot water, placing the basin on the floor and telling her to sit on the bed. Then he put his blanket round her and rubbed her feet until her toes weren’t blue any more. Helene gritted her teeth.

While Carl busily moved his books from stack to stack, he added more hot water to the basin twice. Only then did her feet warm up, and he went out to take away the basin and put on a pair of pyjamas that his mother had brought him for Christmas from a trip to Paris. Helene was already lying under the covers on her back, perfectly straight; it looked as if she were asleep. He drew back the covers and lay down beside her.

Don’t be surprised if you hear my heart beating, he said in a voice that wasn’t so dry any more, and he put out the light.

Didn’t you want to read to me?

He propped himself on his elbow, turned the light on again and saw that she had opened her eyes.

Right, I’ll read to you. He picked up Spinoza’s Ethics, lying on the bedside table, and leafed through it. In the days of Greek antiquity, he explained, licence and freedom meant complete indulgence in pleasure and the demand for happiness. But then the Stoics came along and lent God a hand; duty and virtue, all that is spiritual should be elevated above the lower pleasures, the flesh was anathema. The Middle Ages were a vale of woe. For that old moralist Kant there was still nothing but duty — bleakness wherever you look.

Why do you speak so disparagingly? You act as if happiness meant only physical union. Helene propped her own head up; she suspected that while Carl might be condemning Kant’s bleak outlook, he himself gave no more thought, however briefly, to the kiss she had owed him for months.

Carl dismissed her reproach. Not to speak of Schopenhauer, he went on, who saw the notion that we are here to be happy as an innate error in the education of mankind, a malformation, so to speak. But it doesn’t all depend on happiness, Helene, you know that, don’t you? Go on, then, yawn! Carl tapped her gently on the forehead with his bookmark.

Helene took the bookmark away from him. If I could read every book with you I’d be happy, do you believe that? Helene smiled. Most of all I’d like to read books with your eyes, with your voice, with your flexibility of tone.

Flexibility — what are you talking about? Carl laughed.

I like listening to you. Sometimes it’s as if you hurry over to the window while you’re reading, sometimes you crawl under the table.

And I’ll tell you how it seems to me — as if you climb trees and jump on the table when I’ve crawled under it, on principle.

Do I? Helene wondered what he meant. Did he think her annoying, didn’t he enjoy it when they measured up to each other, feeling the tension that sometimes existed between them?

Well, anyway, here we are lying under the same blanket, there’s an angel here with me — how did that happen? Now Carl looked at her so challengingly, with his mouth a whole millimetre closer, that Helene’s courage deserted her and her fear of the kiss was suddenly greater than her desire for it. So it doesn’t depend on happiness? Helene tapped Carl’s book. No lust and boundless licence?

Carl cleared his throat. What do you want, Helene? Do you want to learn to think?

Elbows in front of the book, chin propped on his hands, Carl was laughing into the cup they formed in front of his mouth. Schopenhauer consoles us: intellectual wealth will overcome even pain and tedium — our old friend Lenz obviously wasn’t clever enough there.

Helene put her head back on the pillow, exposing her throat to him; she deliberately turned on her side and watched his mouth as he spoke. His slightly pursed lips moved too much and too fast for her to follow. He noticed her glance and his eyelid began fluttering again, as if expecting her touch, as if it wanted nothing more. Suddenly he lowered his eyes, Helene saw his fingers trembling on the pages of the book, but he bravely read a couple of sentences that he had noted down on the first page: Happiness is not the reward of virtue, virtue is its own reward. We are not glad of it because we rein in our lusts, but because we are glad of it we can rein them in.

That sounds like good advice for future priests.

You’re wrong, Helene. It’s precious advice for all young men. Precious because we study for years to learn it and only when we’ve studied for years do we know a spark of happiness. Carl suddenly held back. He had been on the point of mentioning the importance of knowing there was a girl in bed beside you too, a woman, not just any woman but this one, his Helene. But he was afraid that might scare her. He didn’t want her putting her wet, cold shoes and stockings on again and going back to Achenbachstrasse through the night, to lie down there in bed beside her sister. So he turned back to where his forefinger had been holding the pages apart and read.

The desire arising from the knowledge of good and evil can be stifled or curbed by many other desires, which themselves arise from the emotions that assail us. Carl’s fingers made the whole page tremble.

Are you cold yourself now? Helene put her hand beside his, their little fingers almost touching.

Reason can overcome the passions by becoming a passion itself.

Helene, listening, said: You have lovely eyes.

In evidence we may cite the fact that emotion felt for a thing imagined in the future is weaker than emotion felt for something in the present.

Are you talking about us, are you talking about love? Now Helene did touch his finger with hers and noticed him start. He was so captivated that he didn’t even turn his eyes to look at her.

You wanted me to read aloud and I am reading aloud. Love, to Spinoza, is nothing but cheerfulness, cheerfulness contingent on the idea of its ultimate cause.

Your eyes are shining. I could lie beside you all evening just looking at your chin, your profile, your nose, the way the lids come down over your eyes. Helene drew up her knees; there was still the blanket between her and Carl.

Carl was going to explain something about desire in relation to love and the relation of both to reason, but he had forgotten the logic of it all; something else had taken him over, something that could not rest any more, could not be a subject for reflection, he wanted to be outside himself, beyond himself, with her. Words flew past. Her mouth was so sweet. He didn’t want to think any more, he had cast his will aside, there was no restraining him now. He felt naked. The touch of the blanket separating him from her excited him enormously. With pure desire, he looked at Helene and kissed her, kissed her mouth, her cheeks, her eyes, his lips felt the smooth skin of her curving forehead, his hand stroked her silky hair, the golden brightness of her hair shone through the narrow opening of his eyelids. His hand felt her collarbone, the curve of her shoulders, his fingertip felt the dimples that he knew so well by sight. Her arms seemed so long, her armpit was moist, he buried his hand in it, he lay close. He heard his breath gasping as he lay against her. Helene’s fragrance lured him so much it hurt. Her arms were folded over her breasts, he had to breathe deeply, he saw time unfurling before him, he could find peace with her if only he wanted to, if only he wanted to, but where was his will now? Reason, he called silently to himself, he saw the word before his eyes, plain and sober, he didn’t know its meaning any more. Nothing but letters with no sound. Sound and meaning were all gone. But his gasping breath was caught between his lips and her curves and hollows, and her breathing was carried to his ear.

The candle hissed, the wick collapsed and sank. The darkness was pleasantly cool. Carl stared into the dark. Helene’s breath came regularly, her eyes were probably closed. He could hardly sleep, her fragrance kept him awake, rousing him even if he did fall into a dream for a few seconds. She was not breathing as deeply as he was, perhaps she wasn’t asleep. He put his hand out to her.

She liked his gentle mouth, his lips, demanding in a different way from Martha’s, with a taste that was new to her.

It will be nice to see your hair grow longer, whispered Carl in the silence. Why was it so short?

So that I could meet you. Don’t you know that? It was long down to here a few hours before I first saw you. Leontine cut it for me.

Carl buried his face in her throat. He caressed her ear with the wingbeat of his lashes. Your hair shines like gold. If we’re ever left starving, I’ll cut it off in secret at night and sell it.

Helene liked the way he said we as she lay there in his arms.

Spring came, the storms died down and the first flight across the Atlantic from east to west had been achieved. Since that winter day, Helene had been spending her nights in Carl’s room. She sometimes did go to Achenbachstrasse, and was relieved to see that Martha seemed better now. Leontine had spent days on end shut away with her. It seemed that Martha had been ill, delirious and in pain, the mirror with the lily-patterned rim above the washstand was cracked, bedclothes had been torn and drenched with sweat in the morning, and had to be changed in the evening or sometimes in the middle of the day, but then she was calm again, weak but at peace. There was still a void full of questions: where did it come from, why, from whom? It was a marvel that Martha managed to get to work in the hospital every day. Leontine said Martha was tough. Her body had got used to it. The two of them had pushed the beds together, and only the trunk under one bed still reminded anyone of Helene and the time she used to spend here, because it had her possessions in it. One day Helene came to visit, opened the trunk, pushed the Baron’s letters aside, and took out the fish carved from horn and the chain.

You can take that with you, said Martha, who didn’t care about the trunk and wanted to be rid of it. Her cloche hat was moth-eaten now; Helene wondered where her own was. She must have left it in the cloakroom of the White Mouse club that evening two years ago.

There’s going to be a vacancy on my ward, said Martha. You could apply. Helene said no, she didn’t want to be travelling north to work in the Jewish Hospital. The pharmacist was paying her better now, and she no longer thought about him when she stood in the pharmacy alone in the evening, mixing tinctures. Carl wouldn’t take any rent from her; his parents gave him an allowance at the beginning of every month. When he went to visit them he took Helene with him on the train to Wannsee, left her in the garden of the inn on Stölpchensee, ordered a raspberry sherbet for her and came back an hour later. Sometimes he asked her if she wouldn’t go with him, saying he would like to introduce her to his parents, but she shrank from the meeting. They might not like me, Helene pointed out, and wouldn’t give way to either his encouragement or his protests. In fact, she enjoyed those Sunday afternoons when she could sit reading in the garden of the inn, undisturbed.

At the end of the summer, through Bernard’s good connections, they got tickets for the new play at the Schiffbauerdamm theatre. Carl sat next to Helene and forgot to hold her hand. His fists clenched, he struck his forehead, he wept, and next moment was shouting approval. Only when the audience demanded the Army Song again as an encore, and people in the back rows stood up, linked arms and rocked in time to the music, did Carl lean back, mildly exhausted, and look at Helene.

Don’t you like it?

Helene hesitated and tilted her head to one side. I don’t know yet.

It’s brilliant, said Carl. His eyes were on the stage again by now, and did not turn back to Helene throughout the performance. He listened, spellbound, to Lotte Lenya, looking almost dazed. When the first verse of the jealousy duet was over and a second followed, Carl was spluttering, doubled up with laughter.

His cheeks were red as he stood up, applauding, even before the final curtain fell. The audience was bubbling over. They simply wouldn’t go until the closing verses of ‘Mack the Knife’ had been sung again. They roared along with it — even Harald Paulsen, playing Macheath, moved his lips, although in all the noise no one could hear if he was singing that song or another one. There was stormy applause. Spectators in the circle and stalls threw flowers on stage. The actors bowed. They looked like dolls, Helene thought, tiny pop-up toys with claqueurs making them bow low, demanding their reappearance again and again. The spotlights wouldn’t allow any of the actors to leave the stage or any of the audience to leave the theatre. They were clapping too, thought Helene, cautiously looking around her. Roma Bahn, who had been cast only recently as Polly, tore off her long bead necklace and scattered the glass beads in the auditorium; she looked as if she was about to walk offstage, but men whistled, either in anger or delight, and she stayed. People shouted, trampled their feet and one man in the stalls threw coins all around.

Helene put her hands over her ears. She had stayed in her seat, the only person to do so; she leaned forward, her chin on her chest, looking down at her lap, and wished she could just disappear. It was more than an hour before they could leave the theatre. People were jamming the exits, they kept stopping, clapping, turning to go back, pushing and shoving. The air was stuffy. Helene was sweating. The uproar frightened her. Someone punched her shoulder, she assumed it was a young man who quickly turned away. Helene did not let go of Carl’s hand. People pushed between them, and again and again it seemed as if they would be forced apart. Helene felt sick. Out of here, she thought, I must get out of here.

Carl wanted to walk along Friedrichstrasse and Unter den Linden. The water in the canal was black, an S-Bahn train ran by overhead. On the bridge, Helene leaned over the stone balustrade and threw up.

You didn’t like it. He was making a statement, not asking a question.

You’re mad about it.

I’m full of enthusiasm, yes.

Helene looked for her handkerchief and couldn’t find it. The sour taste in her mouth wouldn’t let her nausea go away. She felt a little dizzy, so she held on to the stone of the balustrade.

Isn’t this a new departure, true modernity? We’re all a part of the whole, the barriers between being and representation are breaking down. Being and appearance are coming closer. People are hungry, hungry and thirsty for a world that they’ll determine themselves, haven’t you noticed?

What are you talking about? What world will they determine? You talk about enthusiasm and the mob screams. It scares me, oh, that pitiless, overbearing attitude at all social levels scares me. Helene had to straighten up; she felt sick and dizzy, everything seemed to be going up and down. She turned her back to Carl and leaned over the balustrade again. How nice the sandstone felt, rough and firm.

Now Carl put his hand on her back. Darling, are you ill? Do you think the meatballs were off?

Helene’s face hung over the water. She imagined jumping into it. Strings of mucus streamed from her mouth, her nose was running too, she had no handkerchief.

He wasn’t to know that she didn’t have a handkerchief, all she needed was a handkerchief to be able to stand upright again. She had to ask him: Do you have a handkerchief?

Of course I do. Here you are. Come on, let me help you. Carl was solicitous, but Helene was losing her temper.

How can you be so simple, calling that enthusiasm? You read Schopenhauer and Spinoza, then on an evening like this you fling yourself into the crowd as if there were no tomorrow, no yesterday, nothing at all but wallowing in a bath along with the common man.

What do you have against the common man?

Nothing. Helene realized that she was pressing her lips together. I respect him. She wondered whether to tell him that she herself was a common woman. But what good would that do? So she said: The little man isn’t the little man, the great man isn’t the great man. Perhaps people have to be born in comfortable circumstances, like you, to glorify the little man as you do. Open your eyes, Carl.

Carl hugged her. Let’s not quarrel, he said.

Why not? Helene asked softly. She would have preferred to quarrel rather than admit that the play’s effect on Carl, so obvious to her, was genuine enthusiasm. Goodness, she thought, it was nothing but a lot of popular songs strung together.

Carl put his hand on Helene’s mouth to soothe her. Hush, hush, he said, as if she were crying and he wanted to comfort her. I couldn’t bear it if we fell out with each other.

We won’t. Helene smoothed the collar of his coat.

I love you. Carl tried to kiss Helene, but she was ashamed of her sour-tasting mouth and moved her head aside.

Don’t turn away, darling. You’re all I have.

Suddenly Helene had to laugh. I’m not turning away, she laughed. How can you think that? I’ve been sick, I don’t feel good and I’m tired. Let’s go home.

We’ll take a taxi. You’re not feeling well.

No, let’s walk. I need some air.

They walked deep into the night in silence. The narrow wooden bridge in the Tiergarten creaked and gave off its usual musty smell. There was rustling in the undergrowth; rats scuttled across the path in front of them. They stopped under the lime tree near the lock and heard the monkeys calling out from their enclosure.

It seemed strange to Carl that he was the first to speak. But what he wanted to say wouldn’t have fitted into a conversation anyway. He bent down and picked up a lime leaf. Is anyone invulnerable? He held the leaf in front of his chest, roughly where most people think the heart lies. Helene placed her hand on his and carefully guided it to mid-chest instead. She said nothing. Carl dropped the leaf, took both her hands in his, and thought she must feel his heart beating in his own. I could ask you whether you’d marry me, he heard himself saying. You’re twenty-one now. Your mother is Jewish, so my parents won’t object to my choice.

You could ask me, yes. Her eyes didn’t reveal what she was thinking. He looked searchingly at her.

Your shoe’s undone, she said, without looking at his feet. She had obviously noticed some time ago. Carl bent down and tied his shoelace.

You don’t know my mother, my father, any of us.

I know Martha. Your parents are nothing to do with me, just as mine are nothing to do with you. This is between the two of us, no one else. Will you promise to be my wife?

A monkey’s screech met their ears. Helene had to laugh, but Carl looked at her gravely, waiting for an answer.

She said yes. She said it quickly and quietly, and for a moment she was afraid he couldn’t have heard her. Next moment she hoped he hadn’t, because it had sounded so feeble and she would have liked to say a clear Yes from her heart. But a second Yes would have made the first sound even more hesitant and cowardly.

Carl drew Helene to him and kissed her.

Don’t I smell as if I were fermenting?

Carl agreed. A little, yes. Perhaps I’ve waited too long?

He took her hand. The ice was broken. Maybe you’ll give me children, he said, imagining how pleasant it would be if they had two or three small children.

Helene had fallen silent again as they walked on side by side.

Could you have been sick because you’re expecting a baby? Carl liked this idea.

Helene stopped at once. No.

What makes you so sure?

I just know, that’s all. She laughed. Believe me, a nurse knows perfectly well how to prevent that.

Helene was still cheerful, but Carl was shocked.

You shouldn’t say such things. I don’t like it. Don’t you want children too?

Yes, of course, but not now. I want to finish my evening classes. I still haven’t given up my hopes of studying at college. I’m working hard and still I’m barely earning enough for me to rent a place of my own.

Of our own. You can rely on me. You give me children, I’ll pay for your studies. Carl meant it seriously.

Are you trying to do a deal with me?

My parents will support us.

Well, perhaps. Your parents whom I don’t know at all yet. Carl, I must tell you something. I’m not giving a man children. Children can’t be given. Christians give their Lord something, they give love. There was a lot of talk about giving in the theatre just now. I think that’s nonsense. I don’t want you giving me the chance to study.

Why not? My father has promised me money if I pass my exams with distinction.

That will be far too late for me. Helene could sense her own impatience. When I’ve finished the course of evening classes I shall work to pay for my own studies.

Don’t you trust me?

Carl, please, don’t make it a question of trust.

If our children have your hair, your golden hair, I’ll be happy. Carl took her face in his hands.

Helene smiled. Carl kissed her again. He didn’t seem to mind the sour taste, he pressed her back against the trunk of the lime tree and tasted her cheeks, licking round her mouth with the tip of his tongue.

Some people out walking passed them, and Carl claimed they couldn’t be seen in the dim light from the street lamp and in the shadow of the tree. A leaf fell off and landed on his shoulder.

Perhaps all our children will have is my small nose and your thin bones. Helene blew at the leaf, trying to dislodge it from Carl’s shoulder.

I wouldn’t mind. Carl stroked her face with both hands, then covered it. Let’s go home. He put his hand under her summer coat and felt her lowest rib bone. That’s the most beautiful part of you. Helene was afraid he might have mistaken the curving rib for her breast; you could make a mistake under a summer coat, however light it was. She blew at his shoulder again, but the leaf still clung. Now she raised one hand; she didn’t want him to notice the lime leaf, so she stroked his collar and, out of the corner of her eyes, saw the leaf drifting to the ground.

At the Zoo station they took the tram to Nollendorfplatz. Hand in hand, they ran up the stairs to his attic room. He opened the door, hung his hat on the hook and helped her to take off her summer coat, her shoes, her dress. Let’s have a look at you. She revealed herself. He could never have hoped that a woman would ever show herself to him as she did, he had simply had no idea. She laughed as if ashamed, but he knew that she felt no shame. He loved her for the game she was playing. She placed her hand on her belly, as a woman might do to cover herself, but then she moved her hand down to her mount of Venus, her groin, between her thighs. As she did so her gaze grew more concentrated, her nostrils flared and her mouth sketched a smile. Her fingers seemed to know their way. Then she brought her hand to her mouth; it looked as if she were embarrassed and had to bite her nails. Suddenly she turned, looked over her shoulder, where those dimples were tempting him, and asked: What are you waiting for?

He laid her down on the bed and kissed her.

Day was dawning when they finally left each other alone.

Carl got up and opened the window. It was cool; autumn was in the air.

Come here. Helene patted the pillow beside her. Carl lay down with her. He didn’t want a blanket. She liked the sight of him naked. He was exhausted; he had last slept long ago. She had been working all the previous day, he had been studying, they had gone into a little café for a meal, Königsberg meatballs, her favourite, they had gone to the theatre and then stood on the bridge. Later there had been her faint Yes under the lime tree. She was ashamed to think of it. She caressed his chest, circling his navel, from which a long scar ran down. Acute appendicitis, an obstruction of the bowel, which had almost been the end of him. Her clever hand touched every part of his body around his sex, sought his loins, avoided the penis. He knew she was playing with him, he knew how she could grasp him just there on other days. There was no part of his body that she feared. That sometimes seemed strange to him; after all, she said he was the first man she’d made love with. Who cared about being the first? He wanted to be the last, so he had told her: You’re my last woman, do you hear, my sweet, my very last. He laid his hand on her hip.

What I liked best was Lotte Lenya announcing her revenge. That really gets under the skin, you have to admit.

Helene couldn’t believe he was returning to the subject. Poor girl, she said. She let her tone of voice tell Carl that she was keeping her sympathy well within bounds. You let yourself get carried away. Helene shook her head kindly, like a mother humouring her child.

I let that opera-play fire me up, yes. Like a thunderclap.

Crash, bang. Helene blew into his ear.

His hands stroked her belly, his mouth sought her little nipples. They were his, all his. Before Helene gave in to him, she whispered into his shock of hair: I just don’t want you to be blind.

Later, when the sun was falling on their bed, Helene watched over him as he slept. His eyes moved under their lids like small living creatures, a sound came from his throat and made him start in his sleep, then he breathed regularly. Helene whispered something into his ear, hoping that words stealing into his dreams in his sleep, words spoken in her voice, would sink deep into him, into every cell of his being. She herself was too tired to sleep.

You have to separate body and mind, said Leontine, if she didn’t then she couldn’t work.

Separating the affect from the thing it relates to would probably favour the thing. Because an affect without a cause and the thing to which it relates, well, said Carl, filling his small pipe and lighting it, he couldn’t imagine them as separate. His new horn-rimmed glasses disappeared in the smoke; he didn’t yet have an older man’s practised elegance in smoking his pipe. When he spoke in an animated conversation like this, his words came so fast that he swallowed them now and then, and you had to concentrate to work out just what he had said. How could a thing still exist in its own right without anyone looking at it? Even an inanimate object has its appearance, consistency and temperature, and not least a function.

Leontine glanced at Helene, who was lying on the chaise longue and had closed her eyes.

That, I suppose, is the challenge of my own craft: separation. Dissecting the body itself separates single parts from a whole. We can look at the liver, we can look at a tumour on it. We can separate the tumour from the liver and the liver from the body.

But not from a human being, and it will always be that human being’s liver. Removing it from its place, the functional interruption of its symbiosis, robs neither the liver of the human being nor the human being of his liver.

Let’s take the example of a leg. Carl still wasn’t sure whether his ideas agreed with Leontine’s or contradicted them. How many of our fathers’ generation have one of their limbs missing these days? They can live without an arm, without a finger.

Martha groaned ostentatiously. She was getting tired of this conversation between Leontine and Carl; it was some while since she and Leontine had managed to get a day off at the same time like this. It was in the middle of the week, and they were planning to go and visit a couple of friends in Friedenau. Martha put her arm round Leontine’s neck as if to throttle her.

If you two can’t leave each other alone our hosts will have eaten all the cakes before we get there.

Leontine removed Martha’s arm from her neck. The word cognition in itself can undergo a certain change of nature. The husk remains, but what was the cognition of God and his omnipotence yesterday is an incision into the tumour today.

Carl was smoking; he held his head upright — he was careful about the way he carried himself, careful not to shake his head yet, not until he had a clear idea of his train of thought and had found the right words to argue against her.

Meanwhile Leontine used the opportunity to develop her objections. Carl, it’s not just medicine that has added so many new attributes to cognition that we can no longer speak of its having the same character. A glance at the sky, the technology of aviation, the lethal use of poison gas at the end of the war, all those are arguments against God.

No. Carl lowered his head. No, that’s the wrong way to look at it; technology and science are the immediate offspring of divine cognition. It’s only logical for human beings not to separate themselves from the light, the light of cognition. They’re indissoluble. Human beings learn lessons. I don’t know myself whether praying to God does any good. I wouldn’t give God human features, he doesn’t speak in the way the Scriptures suggest, he doesn’t judge. I would deny God’s part in every moral capacity, everything that’s human. God can be better described as a principle, the world principle. Only humans, with their emotional approach, can be accused of believing in God as the metamorphosis of a person. Carl drew on his pipe.

Human beings cause catastrophes today, just look at the war and its heroes. Could we recover from it? And what would be worse, material losses, the loss of human life, or injury to the feelings? Leontine rose and went over to the large samovar, the only object still standing on the long coffee table, and turned the tap. The heroes of the war were different. The water was too hot; she just touched the little glass to her lips without being able to drink. She went on talking over the rim of the hot glass: It’s not ten years ago and see how people have been waiting by the news-stands for days ready to snatch the Vossische Zeitung hot off the press from the vendors. When they devour Remarque’s accounts of the war, they’re looking at their own botched work. We are sufficient unto ourselves.

No, no, if they were sufficient unto themselves they wouldn’t feel either intellectual or physical hunger. Carl’s voice lost its light note and his words, usually just uttered fast, were only half voiced now. I’d like to correct myself, I didn’t mean to claim that we ought to accuse human beings and their passions of anything at all. Instead we ought to look askance at the divine principle which in my view, as I said, is not a moral one. Let’s stop waiting to detect good and evil in man, let’s feel some sympathy for his existence.

You’re crazy, said Helene in a kindly but uncertain way; she wasn’t at all sure of his assumption. She sat up, stretched on the chaise longue and arched her back like a cat. Then she spread out her arms and gave a groan of relief.

To me as a doctor, the extent of sympathy is the deciding factor. I want to help people to live in as healthy a condition as possible. Pain is bad, so I watch my patients, I investigate the cause of the pain, I want to relieve it. Leontine took a small sip of black tea and sat down again. She ran her hand through her short black hair. Then, moving forward, she sat on the edge of the cushions and planted her legs on the floor just as she had done when she was a young girl. It was a mystery where she had found that divided skirt in a coarse-weave fabric; it suggested the culottes that Helene knew only from old fashion magazines. Leontine leaned one outstretched arm on her knee and held her tea glass in the hand of the other arm, elbow crooked. There was a challenge in the way she sat there, in an attitude that Helene found as provocative today as ever, but for the first time it looked to her unfeminine.

Helene swung her feet to the floor and bent down in search of her shoes. Carl, she said, particularly if you think morality is a distinguishing feature of humanity, we ought not to despise what were originally human standards.

I don’t despise them, I’m only suggesting we ignore them.

Head down on the floor to get a better view, Helene reached her arm far under the chaise longue. Face twisted with effort, she looked up at Carl: Oh, let’s go to the cinema instead of this. I’m working until six tomorrow and the evening classes go on till ten. Helene had found her boots, put them on and tied the laces. November made the city grey; you had to wear warm clothing and if possible you went to the theatre or cinema several times a week to make those colourless days tolerable. Carl stayed in his chair and went on smoking. It was hard to tell whether he had even heard Helene’s suggestion.

I admire you, Leontine, so let me tell you something else. In my opinion pain is the only condition that we can’t equate with ordinary passions. It’s pain that makes people imagine a future, whether Utopia or Paradise. If you, as a doctor, relieve the pain of human beings, that’s good for the individual but bad for God. The God principle is built on pain. Only if pain were obliterated from the world could we speak of the death of God.

What about it, do we or don’t we want to get to Friedenau before night falls? Martha was already standing in the doorway, hoping that Leontine would break off her conversation with Carl at long last.

Leontine looked at Carl, who was over ten years her junior, and a touch of sadness and resignation crept into her expression. Her voice was both firm and clear as she said: That’s cruel. She paused and seemed to have to think. Your view is a cruel one, Carl. Yes, this is the right moment to leave. There was a certain harsh, almost bitter note in Leontine’s voice. Listening to you, anyone might think that our priests — I don’t know enough about your rabbis — that our priests were the first heretics, with their promise of relief from pain. Christians as an organized gang? Leontine shook her head. An expression of contempt came to her face. She looked away, looked at Martha, who was still standing by the open double door. Leontine stood up, put her hand on Martha’s arm. Come along, Martha, let’s be off.

The two women left the room. They could be heard in the corridor, speaking a few soft words, short sentences. Then the front door of the apartment closed behind them. Helene dared not look at Carl. The silence between them lengthened. Carl was smoking as he sat there, and in the light from behind it his thin face looked like a little old man’s. He wasn’t used to being left high and dry in mid-conversation. Helene crossed her arms. She wondered what she could say to cheer him up, and felt at the same time that she wouldn’t be able to. He had simply ignored her protest just now; very likely he hadn’t even been ignoring her on purpose.

We could see Pat and Patachon at six, we’d make it to the cinema in time. Helene spoke almost casually. She too had now gone to the door, and hoped that he would finally stand up and follow her.

Leontine mentioned injury to the feelings, said Carl, now speaking slowly, pausing in mid-sentence. His eyes went to the chair where Leontine had been sitting. She spoke of the wish for heroes or at least heroism. I don’t like the ideas of Germanic heroism propounded by people like Arthur Trebitsch. There’s no such thing as either redemption of a Nordic race or a Jewish conspiracy. What’s tragic is that with the end of personal suffering, let’s say at the moment of death, certain ideas are never lost, perhaps we can say not one of them is lost. They go on developing independently of the individual who thought about them during the tiny span of his lifetime. It’s impossible to say who first thought of such an idea because something thought up by the human mind, moulded and impregnated by suffering, doubting itself, has no beginning and no end. Such an absence of boundaries makes me feel quite weak. There’s no limit to mankind. Man drives God off his earth, that belongs in the glowing brazier, as Kurt Schwitters says.

Carl had been talking to himself, still answering Leontine, who had gone a long time ago. Exhausted, he dropped his hands to his thighs.

How about Charlie Chaplin in The Circus? Helene crossed her arms and learned against the door frame.

Carl looked at her in surprise. It was a moment before he could answer. The cinema, he said abruptly, sobered up, yes, let’s go to the cinema. Isn’t that boxing film on? Everyone’s making movies about boxing, we ought to see one. Combat de Boxe, it’s that young avant-garde Belgian director with the unpronounceable name. Dekeukeleire. Even the name is enough for a film, don’t you think? Or that Englishman, his film is called The Ring — the local movie buffs have said it’s the world champion. Isn’t that comical? Carl was trying to convince himself of the humorous nature of his remark.

A film about boxing? Helene wasn’t sure, but she was ready to do anything to get Carl out of that chair and through the door with her at long last.

The street shimmered dark grey; cold moisture hung in the air between the buildings. The street lights were already on, and the evening paper was on sale at street corners.

Were you in love with Leontine?

Leontine? Carl dug his hands into his coat pockets. All right, I admit it. He didn’t look at Helene and she didn’t want to ask exactly what he meant by that.

Helene had run the last part of the way to the Charité Hospital. She had skipped her class that evening; the only subject discussed on the course for the last few weeks had been the questions they might face in the Higher Certificate exam. It was Easter, the pharmacist had given her the rest of the week off. Her small case was dark red and light to carry; she had bought it only a few days ago and hadn’t packed much in it. Helene was still breathing hard as she knocked at the door of the doctor’s office. Leontine opened it and they air-kissed over each other’s shoulders.

Are you sure?

Yes. Helene took her coat off. Fairly sure. I don’t feel sick at all, I just get pressure on my bladder at night.

How long ago was your last period?

Helene flushed. Although she had often changed the sanitary towels of bedridden women during her training and could remember washing Martha’s little cloths in detail, she had never talked to anyone about her own periods before. And now this first question went straight to the subject of her last one.

January the twenty-ninth.

It could simply have been late. Leontine looked enquiringly at Helene, no blame, no judgement.

That’s what I hoped too.

I suppose I won’t have to fetch one of Aschheim’s mice? Leontine worked side by side with the gynaecologist Aschheim in his laboratory, but she would have needed a sample of Helene’s urine taken first thing in the morning to test for pregnancy in a mouse by his method. She could have taken one of those tiny female mice, still immature and without any fur yet, to inject the urine subcutaneously. Then she would have had to wait two days and perform an autopsy on the mouse. If the tiny female had reacted by ovulating, it was certain that the woman was preg-nant. Leontine was helping Aschheim to write a paper on the subject. It was to be ready around the end of the year, if all went well, and would be published the year after that.

I’m going to give you something to send you to sleep.

And I won’t feel anything?

No. Leontine turned; she had stirred some liquid in a glass container and poured it into a glass from which Helene could drink. I know how anaesthetists go about their work.

Yes, of course. Now Helene was frightened. She wasn’t afraid of the minor operation itself, she was afraid of unconsciousness. She sat down on the chair and drank the liquid in the glass at a single draught. She herself knew, from working at the pharmacy, what substances could be carefully administered in what amounts to induce unconsciousness for a limited period.

There was a knock, and Martha came in. She turned the key in the door and went to the window to pull down the shutters.

We don’t want anyone seeing this, she said, and came over to Helene. Now, breathe in. Just a little ether. Helene saw Martha’s steps moving in slow motion as she took her hand. She couldn’t feel Martha’s hand. Martha stood beside her and put an arm round her shoulders. I’m here with you.

There was no dream, no light at the end of the tunnel, no idea of what might have been, nor was there any image of a patriarchal God rising menacingly above Helene.

When she woke up she realized that she still felt numb all over. Only gradually did she feel the burning sensation. She was lying on her back with a strap firmly fastened over her breast. How had the other two women got her on to the stretcher? Helene dared not move. A light on the desk was switched on. Leontine was sitting at the desk, reading.

Is it gone? Helene’s voice shook.

Leontine turned to Helene, stayed where she was on her chair and said: Go to sleep, Helene. We’ll stay here tonight.

Is it gone?

Leontine buried herself in her book again. She didn’t seem to have heard Helene’s question.

A boy or a girl?

Now Leontine did turn to her abruptly. There was nothing there, she said, sounding annoyed. You ought to get some sleep. No embryo, no fertilized egg, you weren’t pregnant.

Footsteps could be heard in the corridor, then moved away again. Helene was coming round properly now. I don’t believe you, she whispered, feeling tears run down her temples and into her ears, lukewarm tears.

Leontine did not reply; she was bending over her book and turned a page. Seen lit from behind, with the light breaking like a prism in Helene’s tears, it looked as if there were a thousand Leontines. Was that a pair of glasses she was wearing? Helene wriggled her toes and the dragging sensation inside her became so sharp and violent that she felt slightly sick.

Is Martha on night duty? Helene tried to suppress the pain. She didn’t want to let it show in her voice.

All this week. She’ll be along later and we’ll take you home. You have seven hours until then, so you should get some sleep.

If Helene hadn’t been in such pain, she would have managed to tell Leontine that she didn’t want to sleep. But the pain would allow her only a few words and no defiance. Could I have a hot-water bottle?

No, warmth would only make it worse. Leontine gave the ghost of a smile. She stood up and came over to Helene, placing a hand on her forehead. You’re crying. I could give you some morphine, a little at least.

Helene shook her head vigorously. Certainly not; she never wanted to take morphine, she’d sooner bear the pain, any pain, although she didn’t say so aloud. She bit her lips, clenching her jaws.

Don’t forget to breathe. Leontine really was smiling now. She stroked Helene’s hair, which was damp from the perspiration on her forehead. Her tears kept on flowing; she couldn’t stop them.

When you need to pass water let me know. It hurts the first time, but the urine will help, it has a healing effect. You just ought to lie down a lot if possible. Does Carl know anything yet?

Helene shook her head again, despite the fact that she was crying. I told Carl we were going on holiday to the seaside. We’re on a trip to Ahlbeck, all right?

Leontine raised her eyebrows. Suppose he happens to meet me or Martha by chance?

He won’t, he’s studying for his exams. He’s stayed in his room for the last three weeks. Helene gasped, because she couldn’t laugh very well in such pain. He said it would still be chilly at the seaside and we mustn’t catch cold.

Leontine took her hand away from Helene’s forehead, went to her desk, pulled the lamp further down to her so that the rest of the room was more dimly lit and went on reading. In the lamplight it looked as if Leontine had a downy covering on her upper lip.

I didn’t know you wore glasses.

Well, don’t give me away to anyone, or I’ll give you away.

In the morning Martha and Leontine walked on either side of Helene. Martha carried the small red case with Helene’s underclothes in it. Helene had to keep stopping when her stomach cramped; she didn’t want to bend double in the middle of the street. Blood was flowing out of her, and it seemed thicker than usual. The wind was whistling, the girls held on to their hats. Helene felt wet all through, moisture crawling up to her kidneys, running down her legs, and she felt as if it had reached the backs of her knees.

You wait here with her, Leontine told Martha. And Martha waited with Helene, putting an arm round her sister’s waist. Martha’s arm seemed uncomfortably heavy to Helene, as if her touch were irritating the pain and bringing it back. Martha’s arm was a nuisance, but she couldn’t speak and she didn’t want to push Martha away. Suddenly she thought of her mother and felt bad. The sisters hadn’t heard from Bautzen for a long time. The last letter from Mariechen had come at Christmas, saying that everything was all right, their mother was better, she could sometimes take a walk with Mariechen now. A spasm seemed to tear Helene’s stomach apart and her knees almost gave way. Now Martha lifted her arm and put her hand on Helene’s shoulder; unasked, she assured her that they’d soon be there. There was a strange expression in Martha’s face, one that Helene had never seen before. Was it fear?

Little angel. Martha drew Helene to her and stood close. She stroked Helene’s face. Helene wanted to tell her she didn’t have to do that, it was only pain, that was all. She just had to overcome it, stand up to it, wait. Ahead of them in the street, Leontine waved; at last a taxi had stopped. It was beginning to rain, and passers-by put up their umbrellas. Leontine was now vigorously beckoning to them to join her. The blood between Helene’s legs had cooled. Martha and Leontine took her to the little room in Achenbachstrasse. They had pushed the beds back into their old position, one against each wall, and assured Helene that the two of them wouldn’t mind sharing the same bed for this week. They brought her water and told her it was important for her to rest as much as possible. There was a fragrance of bergamot and lavender. Helene wanted to wash herself, but she was not supposed to stand up. Doors closed out in the corridor. The Baron, perhaps?

No, Heinrich Baron had gone to Davos for the sake of his tuberculosis. He had been so ill recently that Leontine had examined him and prescribed something. The Karfunkels, husband and wife, had rented his room instead, said Martha. Fanny was glad to get a good rent, and had been able to redeem the gramophone and get it out of pawn.

Helene lay down on the narrow bed and closed her eyes. It was too bright.

It would be better if you lay on your front, little angel, then the uterus can drop more easily. Helene turned over. The pillows, the mattress, everything here smelled of Leontine. Helene closed her eyes again. The cramps weren’t too bad. And she wasn’t pregnant; that was good.

She lay on her front all that week, breathing in the smell of Leontine and being patient.

Martha had found out that the bus from Ahlbeck went to Heringsdorf and the express train from Heringsdorf station would reach Stettin Station in Berlin at two-thirty in the afternoon. So Leontine telephoned a friend in Ahlbeck and asked her to send a telegram to Carl Wertheimer. Arriving Sunday two-thirty, Stettin Station. Kisses, Helene.

Leontine was on duty at the hospital on Sunday. Martha and Helene went out to Bernau by tram. They waited a good half-hour at the railway station. Several newspaper boys ran towards the train as it came in, shouting, offering their Special Editions to the passengers at the windows. The train steamed and hissed even when it stopped. Berlin, all aboard. It was so crowded that Martha and Helene had difficulty in climbing on. The whistle blew and they were off. The train was full of Berliners who had been spending the Easter break by the sea and at other holiday resorts in the north-east, and were now on their way home to the city. They devoured their newspapers, exchanging views on the latest incidents in Schleswig-Holstein. They had no business in Wöhrden, said one old man, what did they think they were doing there anyway? Vigorous argument broke out around the old man. Cowards, that’s what they are, he said.

Cowards? Not on your life! Justice is at stake.

It’s dangerous to play with fire.

Helene held tight to the pole inside the carriage. They hadn’t managed to find a seat. The pain was quite slight now, it had moved from her lower body to her back at the base of her spine, where it throbbed only to an extent that Helene could endure quite well. The people around her couldn’t stop talking, everyone arguing with everyone else. Obviously these strong opinions were catching; every man, even every woman, wanted to speak at length about his or her views and arguments.

Underhand, that’s what I call it. The woman who said that sounded offended.

We’re not having an assembly banned, cried a man, and his neighbour agreed, we’re not letting them slaughter us. Martha and Helene had to stand by the door all the way to Stettin Station.

Carl was waiting at the station, waving his arms about as if he had wings. The train groaned and finally drew to a halt. They got out, Carl hurried towards them, shook hands with Martha and took Helene in his arms.

I’ve missed you.

Helene pressed her face close to him, to his smooth fur collar. She didn’t want him to look at her. People streamed past them.

A whole week by the seaside, and there am I sitting in my room and wondering whether Hegel absolutely had to alienate the German language from its original usage in order to express his ideas adequately. I mean, was it really necessary? Carl laughed. Where have you left Leontine?

She had to come back ahead of us. Professor Friedrich phoned her; he needed her urgently.

Let’s have a look at you. Yes, you do seem better. Carl inspected Helene like an apricot he was thinking of buying, and tenderly pinched her cheek. A hint of rings round the eyes, maybe. You two didn’t go dancing without me, did you?

We certainly did! And Martha handed Carl the little suitcase to carry.

That spring and summer flew by. Helene worked at the pharmacy, took the exams at the end of her course and waited for the results. Carl sat at his desk among his towers of books from morning to night; if he went out it was only for one of his written or oral examinations. At the end of the summer they both believed the world was at their feet. Two professors here were vying for Carl’s attention; he just had to decide whether he would rather go on reading Hegel, or follow the general trend of the time and look more deeply into Kant and Nietzsche. He wrote letters to Hamburg and Freiburg, where he knew of other scholars whose work filled him with enthusiasm. After his results were announced — he had passed summa cum laude — an invitation from Dresden arrived asking if he would like to study the question of universal validity in Kant’s aesthetics. But Carl was still waiting for answers from Hamburg and Freiburg.

You do know that we must get married before I leave Berlin, don’t you?

Carl squeezed Helene’s hand. They were crossing Passauer Strasse. There was a smell of foliage in the air; the autumn sunlight showed the light yellow of linden leaves against the dark branches of the trees. In Nürnburger Strasse the fallen leaves were being swept into heaps. Helene walked right through the middle of one heap, kicking it up with the toes of her shoes so that the dry leaves rustled. The maple leaves glowed green and red, their veins shining yellow and green, and edged with brown. The brown gold of chestnut leaves. Helene bent down and picked up a chestnut that had slipped out of its husk. Look, see how smooth it is, and such a lovely colour. She ran her thumb over the curve of the chestnut and held it out to Carl.

Carl took the chestnut from her hand, waiting for her answer. Her eyes were bright and looked almost green in the yellow light of the setting sun. There was a smile in them. Must we?

He nodded, he couldn’t wait any longer. Be my wife, he said.

Helene hardly had to reach up at all to kiss him on the mouth. I’m yours, she whispered.

Marry me in the spring? He wanted to make sure of it. He took her hand and walked on.

In the spring, she agreed. She wasn’t going to follow behind him, she caught up, and they both walked faster and faster. They had been invited to a party. The lights were already on in Achenbachstrasse. Fanny was still busy with her preparations; she needed the help of her domestic staff at home, and asked Carl and Helene to take Cleo for a walk. When they came back later the apartment was full of guests. A hoarse voice issued from the horn of the gramophone, complaining in song of the times they lived in. Their cousin from Vienna, whom Helene knew only slightly, hurried over to her as soon as they came through the door. He was so glad to see Helene, he said, he had never forgotten their delightful conversation two years ago. Helene wondered what conversation he meant. She had only a vague recollection of it; something to do with bringing up children. Such a pity, said her cousin in his rather moist-sounding voice, that she didn’t speak French. Now he put his large, soft hand on Helene’s arm. He had thought of offering her the post of governess to his daughters. Helene looked at him in astonishment. You could have our maid’s room; after all, we’re family.

Could she take their coats, asked Otta, obviously not for the first time. Relieved, Helene turned aside, took off her coat and exchanged glances with Carl, who was waiting patiently beside her. Helene took his hand.

I hear from Fanny, the cousin went on, that you’ve passed your exams with excellent marks. Well, no one would have expected anything else. I’m sure you would teach my daughters very well indeed. There are two of them.

This is my fiancé, Carl Wertheimer, said Helene, interrupting what her cousin was saying. The cousin swallowed in surprise as his glance fell on Carl for the first time.

Delighted. The cousin offered Carl his hand. So you’re the man who’s going to be lucky enough to… Here the cousin obviously had to stop and wonder why he assumed Carl was so lucky. He tried again. Who’s going to be lucky enough to lead this lovely young lady to the altar.

Carl did not conceal his pride or his pleasure. It was the first time Helene had introduced him as her fiancé. We’ll invite you to the wedding, he said in friendly tones. Will you excuse us now? Gently pushing Helene ahead of him, Carl made his way through the guests waiting in the entrance hall and into the drawing room, where people were sitting and standing crowded close together. Martha was talking to Fanny’s new tenants, who looked large, pale and sober beside the other guests. The wife was holding a glass and Leontine had it topped up with more water. To Helene’s surprise, she saw the familiar receding hairline of the Baron standing next to Leontine. His back was turned to the door and he didn’t see Helene coming.

How lovely to see you, said Helene, tapping him on the shoulder.

Helene! The Baron spread out his arms, palms upwards, fingers slightly curving, a gesture that also suggested he was distancing himself. But he took Helene’s hand and kissed it.

Are you better now? she asked. Have you been able to convalesce?

No, no better. When I arrived the doctor diagnosed a chill of the heart, what do you think of that, Helene? For a moment it looked as if the Baron were going to reveal everything about himself in front of everyone. He looked keenly around, but then began laughing heartily next moment. Ah, Davos isn’t what it used to be. A few genuine invalids whom one doesn’t want to know, and a great many hysterics who love to exchange medical anecdotes all day and stroll around the grounds of the spa. They go on group pilgrimages to the Forest Sanatorium.

Is that so? said a small, slim person whom Helene didn’t know. Obviously this delicate-looking creature admired the Baron and was listening with a finger to her ear.

But no normal mortal so much as gains entry. The Baron was pleased to have an audience at last. I simply said, assuming an air of importance, that I was to see a certain Monsieur Richter. That seemed to me a good sort of name. The doorman nodded, satisfied, and let me sink into a big armchair for a while. I acted as if I were waiting. Unbearable, the company there, terrible.

How very true, said the frail creature, pushing a strand of copper-coloured hair back from her face.

Helene was glad to find the Baron in such high spirits. He was obviously better.

Carl Wertheimer, said the Baron now, trying to look pleased. How nice that you could come too.

We’re engaged. Helene looked challengingly at the Baron.

Yes, er, yes, I’ve heard about that already. The Baron scratched his ear. Leontine told me about it. I must congratulate you. As if he found this difficult, the Baron put the flat of his hand to his receding hairline, and absent-mindedly tugged at his thin hair with his forefinger and middle finger. The delicate creature beside him shifted restlessly from foot to foot, looking around in a friendly manner.

My God, yes, what was I about to say? Oh, I wanted to tell you about the philosophical symposium, the argument that we weren’t spared at Davos. But perhaps first I should introduce Fräulein Pina Giotto; we met in Arosa.

Staying at the same boarding house, the delicate creature confirmed.

It was like this: the prices in Davos, ah, here in Berlin you’ve no idea. And Arosa, well, it’s almost part of Davos. The Baron fiddled with his hair, his eyes on Helene, and forgot to blink.

Situated even higher up, claimed the delicate creature.

The Baron tore his eyes away and looked uncertainly at his companion. Cautiously, he ventured a gentle but defensive gesture in her direction and spoke again.

As I’m sure you know, Carl, the argument between Cassirer and Heidegger had the whole place in uproar.

Terrible, yes, said Fräulein Giotto. One of them simply left the resort.

Heidegger announced that he was going to annihilate Cassirer’s philosophy.

Yes, and then one of them simply went away. Did you ever hear of such a thing? As I said to Heini, what a coward. Ducking out simply isn’t done.

Now the Baron went red and sweat broke out on his forehead. He seemed unhappy with Fräulein Giotto’s remark. Well, it wasn’t quite like that. Apologetically, the Baron looked from Carl to Helene and back to Carl again. I’ll explain. The Baron passed his handkerchief over his forehead and the gleaming bald patch on his head. It was about Kant. Heidegger’s altered theory of Being is fundamental, radical, he hardly let Cassirer get a word in, perhaps Cassirer felt he wasn’t being taken seriously. He was concerned with symbolic forms. He kept talking about the idea of the symbol. Perhaps that’s why his hasty departure seemed to most of us a sign and symbol of his defeat.

Helene avoided exchanging glances with Carl. She didn’t want to give him away. Weren’t those the two gentlemen in Hamburg and Freiburg to whom Carl had written, and for whose answers he had been waiting several weeks?

When the party was sitting round the big table later, and after many courses the last to be served was a soufflé on a bed of apples, Carl was talking to Erich about the latest developments in the economy.

Buy, I tell you, buy, buy, buy. Erich was sitting opposite Carl and Helene. He had draped one arm round the back of Fanny’s chair and was waving a glass of cognac in the air. Erich’s neck, a sportsman’s neck, seemed to Helene even more massive than usual today. We can only profit by it, believe me. The bursting of the speculation bubble is an advantage to us in Europe.

Don’t you see any danger?

Oh, New York. You’re still young, Carl. Presumably you don’t have money. But if you did I’d give you good advice. The collapse in America will be useful to us. Erich leaned over the table and said, holding his hand in front of his mouth so that Fanny, sitting beside him and talking to the gentleman on her other side, wouldn’t hear him: She’ll soon be a rich woman again. I persuaded her to take out a mortgage on this apartment. She’ll be buying the whole building, I assure you.

At this point Fanny stood up and raised her tall crystal glass. She asked her guests for their attention. She praised her friends, enumerating the anniversaries and honours enjoyed by some of them over the last few months, and every time the company clapped. Helene and Carl were glad she didn’t mention the results of their examinations, so they did not have to stand up, nod at the diners around the table in a dignified way and show themselves proud of their achievements.

Carl leaned over to Helene and said quietly: Pride is for Philistines. Helene lowered her eyes; she agreed. To both of them the pride and self-satisfaction of the gentlemen whom Fanny mentioned were not justified by their distinctions, although it was to celebrate those distinctions that the show was staged.

As the evening wore on, Helene found herself standing with the Baron and Pina Giotto. Although she felt she couldn’t bear any more of their chatter, she didn’t want to leave their side, because Erich’s greedy eyes had been following her all evening. Through the open doorway of the veranda, Helene saw that Carl was sitting there talking to Leontine, Martha and a couple whom she didn’t know. Pina Giotto was trying to persuade the Baron to go to one of the big department stores with her next day; she wanted a feather boa. The Baron was looking for excuses; he probably guessed how expensive such a boa was. Boa, boa… Pina Giotto gave him no peace. Feather, boa, boa, feather. Long feathers, light feathers, shiny or matt? Peacock feathers, foreign feathers, a dress made of feathers. All this talk of feathers reminded Helene of her mother. In her last letter Mariechen had said she was a little better. Not confused any more, a walk was sometimes possible. It was nearly eleven when the first guests went into the front hall to call for their coats. Some were going on to a midnight revue, others wanted to go dancing at the ballroom. Come with us, said Fanny, with an all-embracing gesture over the heads of the Baron, his Fräulein Giotto and Helene. When, later, Fanny saw Helene among her late guests she babbled: You too, you little rascal.

Helene was looking for Carl, but at present the veranda was occupied by two men practising arm-wrestling at the low table. Fräulein Giotto was explaining to the Baron that the diamond she had seen at the jeweller’s this morning was a beautiful size, just the thing to hang on a simple chain. Helene began to feel uneasy. Wherever she looked, she couldn’t see Carl or Martha and Leontine. In spite of the danger that Erich might follow her, she excused herself almost inaudibly and strolled as casually as possible through the other rooms. She couldn’t spot them anywhere. Just as she had crossed the Berlin Room and, looking around again, glanced back, she saw that Erich had her in his sights. He had followed her and was now making haste towards her. Helene opened the door to the back of the apartment. The light in the corridor wouldn’t come on; she hurried past the first two doors when she heard footsteps behind her. For a moment the cone of light falling on her in the corridor from the Berlin Room disappeared. Erich had closed the door. In sudden panic, Helene groped along the wallpaper until she found the frame and then the handle of the door. It must be her old one, the room now occupied by Leontine and Martha. Voices and laughter came through the door. At the far end of the corridor Erich had obviously lost his sense of direction. She heard him breathing heavily. But she couldn’t open the door. Helene shook the handle.

Just a moment, said a voice inside the room. It was a few seconds before the door was opened and Martha let Helene in.

Oh, it’s you. Martha was obviously relieved and asked Helene to come in quickly. She shut the door again behind her sister. Taking no more notice of Helene, she sat down on the narrow bed. Leontine was perched on the edge of it with the unknown woman who had been sitting with the others on the veranda just now. The unknown woman was wearing a feather boa, the object of Pina Giotto’s dreams. Dark violet feathers set off her striking cheekbones and shadowed eyes very well, and a fine permanent wave lay close to her shapely skull. Carl was sitting with his back to Helene at the washstand; now he stood up, surprised to see her. Helene noticed that he pushed the little silver box lying under his hand over to the unknown man who, Helene had thought before when she saw them on the veranda, must be the husband of the woman in the feather boa. But the woman with the boa was now sitting on the bed kissing Leontine. Violet feathers covered Leontine’s face. Helene took fright when she realized how wide her eyes were opening in her surprise, and tried to look casually in some other direction. Only where? She knew what the box was, and its secret transfer from Carl to the other man could mean only that Carl didn’t want to let Helene know what he was doing.

The others are leaving. Fanny wants us to go dancing with them.

She always wants to go to that Royal Club, said Martha, rather disappointed. Let’s go to the Silhouette, it’s nicer there. Martha opened the door.

Right, let’s go, said Carl in a formal tone. Barely audibly, he sniffed. Now he went over to Helene and took her arm. Let’s go dancing, my love.

Helene agreed; she didn’t want to let anything show in her face. Only later, when they were dancing in a dimly lit ballroom and Carl wouldn’t keep his hands off her hips, stroking her everywhere, in places that he never usually touched in company — he was laying siege to her as if they hadn’t seen each other for days, as if they hadn’t made love only that morning — only then did she find that she couldn’t set her mind at rest or hold back any more. So in defiance of the loud music she called in his ear: Do you sniff that stuff often?

Carl had understood; he must have guessed that she had seen the box. Now he held Helene away from him, stretching out his arms, lowered his forehead slightly and looked at her. He shook his head. It mattered to him; she had to believe him. She did, not only because there was nothing else she could do. Their bodies belonged together: when he held her as they danced, when they let go of one another and came together again, his eyes looking into hers, searching and uncertain, looking inside to what he knew there with his kiss on her lips, when she felt that the two of them belonged together, it was a sense of closeness that did not merely admit or allow little secrets and differences; it unconditionally celebrated those secrets.

Helene danced with him until morning. Once she called to him: Hamburg or Freiburg?

Helene, cried Carl back. He drew her to him and whispered into her ear: I want to be wherever you are. His tongue touched her earlobe. If my wife will come with me, let’s go to Paris.

On a February day, when the sun shone down out of a blue sky and the snow still lying in the streets was reddish-brown with the ashes scattered on it, Helene was standing in the pharmacy weighing out sage leaves on her scales for a customer. The customer wanted a whole pound. Helene dug the little shovel into the jar and tipped measure after measure into the scales. Perhaps the customer was going to put sage leaves in her bath. The bell rang as the door opened. Helene looked up. The small boy who had been standing in front of the jars of sweets for a long time left the pharmacy, hands in his pockets. The smell of burning coal and petrol drifted in from outside. It was midday, and apart from her present customer there was only another elderly lady waiting to be served. The telephone rang. The pharmacist appeared in the doorway of the back room. For you, Helene, he called and looked at her as if he were pleased. It was the first phone call that had come for her in all these years. I’ll take over; you go and answer it. The pharmacist took Helene’s place and she went to the telephone.

Yes? She had probably said it too quietly; now she called in a louder voice, against the rushing sound on the line: Yes?

This is Carl, Helene, I have to speak to you.

Has something happened?

I want to see you.

What?

Can you leave work early today?

It’s Wednesday. I leave at noon anyway. I’ll be coming out in quarter of an hour’s time.

Helene had to hold the phone close to her left ear to make out what he was saying.

Excellent, shouted Carl. We’ll meet at the Romanesque Café.

When?

Loud crackling interrupted them.

Darling, one o’clock at the Romanesque Café.

One o’clock at the Romanesque Café. Helene hung up. She had been pressing the receiver to her ear so hard that her temple hurt. When she came back into the front of the shop, the pharmacist was wrapping up a packet of Veronal and taking the elderly lady’s money.

You can put your coat on now, Helene, he said in kindly tones, smiling at her mischievously, as if it were in his power to fix a rendezvous for her with the man she loved.

Helene crossed the Steinplatz. A thaw had come, changeable weather. She wondered why Carl wanted to see her so urgently. Maybe the philosopher in Hamburg had sent an answer. The man from Freiburg had written just before Christmas rejecting Carl’s application. He was impressed, he wrote, by Carl’s summa cum laude, but not so impressed by Hegel, and the posts for assistant lecturers were all filled. Helene stopped in Fasanenstrasse. A bicycle rang its bell behind her. It suddenly occurred to her that the cyclist might be Carl, who rode his bicycle in all weathers. She turned, but it was only a baker’s boy who must have thought the road itself too slushy for him to ride on it. Helene stepped to one side, standing on a small mound of ice that was melting at the edges, and let the baker’s boy ride past on the pavement. The wheels of his bicycle splashed slush on her coat. They were just waiting for Cassirer’s answer now. In January, all doors were still open to Carl in Berlin. He could choose between those two professors who were vying for him here. But what he really wanted even more was to build up a reputation for research of his own, and for the last few weeks it hadn’t looked as if he still seriously expected a reply from the philosopher Cassirer in Hamburg. What else could seem to Carl so urgent; why didn’t he want to wait until this evening? Perhaps he wanted to see her to discuss the forthcoming visit to his parents that weekend? She was afraid to meet them. She and Carl had almost quarrelled the evening before. Helene had said she couldn’t go to see his parents empty-handed, she wanted to buy them a present. Carl didn’t think that was right. They needed the money badly for other things: food, books, and not least for their future life together when they moved to a proper apartment. Helene wanted to give his parents a little green vase that she had seen at Kronenberg’s, in a corner at the front of the display window. A green vase? Carl had said incredulously, and it had seemed to Helene that he was mocking her. Even this morning, when they said goodbye to each other, Carl had told her his parents really wouldn’t be expecting any present. They had wanted to meet Helene for years and, after all, his parents knew that they weren’t exactly rich. Carl had been putting together the books he would need this morning, standing with his back to her, and murmured something else. What did you say? Helene had to ask, and he had turned round and said, in a casual tone of voice: The fact is, they don’t know you’re living with me. Helene had to sit down. It was a good three years since she had begun sharing his room. Every month she tried to buy as much of the food for their housekeeping as possible with her own money, since Carl refused to take any of it for the rent because his parents paid that. So did he want her to pretend to his parents on Sunday that she was still living with her aunt?

Carl had tried to calm her down, assuring her that he was going to tell them the truth himself on Sunday.

But in Helene’s eyes that was worst of all. How could he take his long-standing fiancée to his home for the first time and say, during lunch: Oh, we’ve known each other for four years now, we got engaged to be married two years ago, but anyway we’ve been living together for over three years? Helene rubbed her eyes.

Look, you would never come with me to see them, how was I to explain that yes, you were living with me, but you didn’t want to meet them?

Oh, so now I’m to blame, am I?

No, Helene, it’s nothing to do with blame. It would have struck them as uncivil. How could I say that you simply didn’t feel confident enough?

Helene had wanted to answer back but didn’t dare, and she felt uncomfortable about that. She had scrubbed at her eyes until Carl came over and held her hands. Who did his parents think, she wondered, was washing and mending Carl’s clothes, making sure he had a hot meal in the evening and keeping the room bright and cheerful, feeding the sparrows on the windowsill, watering the orchid in its herbarium when Carl crossed the Monti della Trinità every summer to go on holiday with his parents near Lake Zürich? When they went away his father did research work at the Swiss National Observatory, working out cycloids and mapping sunspots, while mother and son went to concerts together. His sister hadn’t accompanied them on those holidays since her marriage. Carl had kissed Helene’s hands and assured her that they would clear it all up on Sunday, the two of them. It was only a small thing they had to explain between them then; this was about their life together, after all, and everything that still lay ahead in their future.

Helene had to take care not to slip as she walked along. Ice still lay under the melting snow in many places. She had to wait outside the Memorial Church for a long time; the cars were driving slowly and skidding on the road. Carl was a good cyclist, he’d be careful, or he might have left his bicycle at the library. The big Kurfürstendamm clock said ten to one. Helene felt restless and stationed herself under the awning above the huge window of the Romanesque Café.

She was sure Carl had some good news to tell her. Perhaps he’d been offered another post somewhere? Perhaps he hadn’t made up his mind between the two offers here and wanted to ask her which she thought the best choice? But if he had spent the morning in the library, as he had said earlier that he would, then nothing world-shaking could have happened there. Helene smiled nervously. She remembered how Carl would sometimes stop reading in the evening because he wanted to tell her some great idea that had occurred to him. Helene’s eyes searched to both right and left of the Memorial Church on the other side of the crossing. Wasn’t that a cyclist wearing a cap like Carl’s over there? But perhaps he had left the library some time ago and had telephoned from Viktoria-Luise-Platz? And perhaps that was because he’d met the postman and the postman had brought him a letter from Hamburg. Hamburg was said to be a beautiful city. Sometimes Helene dreamed of living in a city with a harbour. She liked to see big ships. It seemed to her one of the disadvantages of her birthplace that it was neither by the sea nor in the high mountains. She knew mountains only from a distance, and anyway the Lusatian Hills were small and not real mountains at all. The sea was clear and distinct in her mind’s eye; she had painted it in glowing colours for Carl, but she had never actually seen it.

Helene came out from under the awning and took a few steps to the left towards Tauentzienstrasse, in case he was coming that way. She looked around searchingly, wishing he would arrive. The four points of the compass just weren’t enough here, and she didn’t know which way he’d be coming. The sea, no… but she did know the big ships on the Elbe at Dresden. The clock said five past one. Suddenly Helene thought she knew why he had to see her in such a hurry, and laughed with relief. He had bought their wedding rings. Helene straightened her hat. Why hadn’t that occurred to her before? He wanted to give her a surprise, that must be it. Perhaps he’d meant them to meet inside the café here and she had misunderstood. He was inviting her out in honour of the day. Helene looked around her. She couldn’t very well go in; she might miss his arrival. A car hooted. Couldn’t that woman with her two children move a little faster? But the traffic was getting worse and worse, and suppose there was another storm? Helene looked up at the clock. Quarter past one. Perhaps something had kept him. It wasn’t like Carl to be late. When they had arranged to meet somewhere, he was usually waiting for her at the appointed place when she arrived. Helene looked in all directions once again, turned a few steps to the right. He might be coming along Budapester Strasse. The square, the tall church, the pavements, the roadways, they were all clearly visible despite the bright sunshine. Advertising pillars, people standing in line outside kiosks. Both cars and passers-by skidded in the slush; a coachman had to keep cracking his whip to get his horse moving. Helene shifted from foot to foot; her feet were wet and cold. She remembered the horse falling over on the day they arrived in Berlin. Had that horse died? A heart attack, trouble with its brain or lungs. An embolism. She had decided to take her boots to the cobbler this week. This would have been a good day; she’d have had time today. Since she didn’t have a second pair she’d have to wait in the shop until the cobbler had stitched them up and resoled them.

A few minutes before one-thirty Helene decided that if Carl hadn’t arrived by the time it was half past she would go and look inside the café. Perhaps he was finally planning to grant her long-cherished wish to go roller-skating, and had gone to the roller-skating rink to find out how to hire skates and buy tickets. They said it was expensive. The Russian girls at Helene’s evening classes had often talked about the roller-skating rink and the latest acquaintances they’d made there. They met regularly at the rink to pirouette and twirl around. These girls were all younger than Helene and came from good Jewish families. Roller-skating must be fun. Helene waited until the big hand of the clock rested on the numbers six, then seven and finally eight. Then she went in.

The café was full. Customers sat at the little tables, and the mirrors all the way up to the ceiling made it look as if there were even more of them. It was lunchtime, many of the guests were eating meat roulades and potatoes, and the aroma of Savoy cabbage hung in the air. A distinguished-looking gentleman in black waved to a second man in strikingly informal garb; he wore pale, wide-legged trousers, braces over a crumpled shirt and a white beret. All he needed was an artist’s palette in his hand. This was a place where people liked to withdraw into one of the attractive chambres séparées. Wine was drunk from tall glasses. Helene’s throat tightened. She looked around and, sure enough, there were customers both young and old eating alone at many of the tables, but no Carl. The clock above the panelled bar said quarter to two. Why was her heart beating so hard? There was nothing for her to worry about. Helene went out of the café again into the Kurfürstendamm. A small crowd of people had gathered, an elderly lady kept calling Thief! Thief! Others were holding a boy who couldn’t be more than ten or twelve. He wasn’t struggling, he was crying. You little rascal, said one of the men holding him. But that wasn’t enough for the old lady. Rogues like you ought to be locked up, she scolded him, you just wait until the police get here!

Helene decided not to wait any longer. She knew that Carl wasn’t going to come now.

Perhaps they had misunderstood each other and he had meant a different time? But she knew perfectly well that he had said one o’clock. Wasn’t it possible that he had meant something else? Maybe another place? They had often met on this corner; maybe he had wanted to meet somewhere else today and mentioned the café by mistake, but with another one in mind? Helene didn’t know where to turn, where to go; she felt afraid, although she told herself there was nothing to fear. She went to a kiosk and bought cigarettes. It was the first time she had ever bought any for herself. She really needed the money for the cobbler, but she couldn’t think about going to the cobbler now, she wanted to smoke a cigarette. She didn’t have a cigarette holder; she’d have to smoke without one. She broke two matches before she managed to light the cigarette. A little piece of tobacco came adrift, tasting bitter on her tongue. It wasn’t easy to hold the cigarette in gloved fingers. Helene didn’t know which way to look now. She was standing in the middle of a busy crowd of people whose lunch break was over and who were hurrying back to work. Some of them might have appointments to keep, and had to run to the station and take a train going west.

The wind blew in her face, a west wind from the direction of the Memorial Church. Helene tried breathing deeply to inhale the smoke. South, east, north. But before she could draw the smoke into her lungs her bronchial tubes closed against it and she had a coughing fit. So she puffed the cigarette instead. Little clouds of smoke came out of her mouth. The rather sour, bitter taste of it made her feel pleasantly light-headed. She took short, quick puffs, blowing out her cheeks as far as she could, and finally letting the cigarette end fall in the slush at her feet, where it went out at once.

Helene didn’t know where to go in search of Carl now. She walked down Tauentzienstrasse to Nürnberger Strasse, round several blocks, past the school where she had taken her evening classes — they had finished months ago now — and she did not turn into Geisbergstrasse until dusk was falling. She could see the black roof of their building from the other side of the square; no light, however faint, showed in their attic room.

All the same, she went up to make sure that no one had come in. The door was locked, the room itself exactly as they had left it in the morning. Helene didn’t take off her coat. She went downstairs again, past the young man who lived on the third floor and kept forgetting his keys, so that he often had to sit outside the landlady’s apartment with a stack of papers, perhaps revising a stage play or the scenario of a film, until someone came to let him in. He generally had a pen in his hand and was scribbling something in the margin of the typewritten pages. Helene went down Bayreuther Strasse to Wittenbergplatz, over Ansbacher Strasse and back to Geisbergstrasse, to Viktoria-Luise-Platz, up to the attic room and back down to the street again. The third-floor tenant must have been let into his room by now.

Helene had stopped wondering why Carl had wanted to speak to her so urgently in the middle of the day; she was just hoping he would appear and they could fall into each other’s arms. Something must have detained him. Helene smoked a second cigarette, then a third as she walked around the streets for the third time, and in the end she had smoked eight. She felt very sick. She wasn’t hungry at all.

She told herself she wanted to be home when he returned. They could eat together when he arrived, he would put his hand against her cheek — oh, if only he would come home.

She took off her boots. She didn’t want to disturb the landlady by asking for hot water. So she sat on the bed, wrapped the blanket round her cold feet and tried to read the new book that Carl had brought her two days ago, but she couldn’t get beyond the first poem in the volume. She read it again and again, read each line several times, and said the last three lines out loud to herself: And then I thought I saw/you, far off, drain the glass /from which I drank before. Then she began again at the beginning: After that hour has passed/What next, what news is heard? /Those friends who went there last/Will send no word. Helene understood only a fraction of what the poem said, her mind was somewhere else, half still in her thoughts, half closed off entirely while her heart beat fast and her eyes narrowed. It was as if, as she repeatedly read the lines of verse, some certainty were forcing itself upon her, taking her over. At one point Helene stood up. She was freezing. There was a basket under the washstand and Carl’s vest, ready for washing, hung over the edge of it. She put it on next to her skin and his pyjamas over it. Overnight she counted the time by the distant chiming of clocks. When the first sounds could be heard stirring in the house in the morning twilight she stayed sitting on the bed by the wall, thinking: something has to happen now to make you get up, get washed and dressed. See you tomorrow, the pharmacist had said yesterday. She couldn’t keep him waiting. Helene heard steps on the stairs, their stairs, the last flight that led only to the attic. There was a soft knock on the door. Helene knew that Carl wasn’t forgetful, he always had his key on him; she didn’t want to open the door. The knocking grew louder. Helene looked at the door. Her heart was thudding, exhausted with beating all night long. Helene knew that she had no choice: she must stand up, she stood up; she must go to the door, she went to the door; she must open the door, she opened it.

The landlady stood outside, still in her dressing gown. Fräulein Helene, she said, looking not at Helene but at the floor. Helene held on to the doorknob; she was so weak that the floor seemed to move and rise, turn round, sway back and forth. The landlady was in some difficulty. Well, many people found it hard to talk early in the morning. My telephone rang, she said, Professor Wertheimer told me his son wouldn’t be coming back, he said he’d had an accident.

Which son? thought Helene.

She knew it was Carl who had had the accident, she had guessed it even before she heard the steps on the stairs and had to open the door. But which son, which son was the landlady talking about now? Helene said: Yes. She didn’t want to move her head unnecessarily, no nodding it, no tilting it, after all, if it turned it might fall off her shoulders.

I asked Professor Wertheimer if you’d been told yet. He said he didn’t think you could have been. I told him I would do it, I could go up to you. Professor Wertheimer said he didn’t know where you lived, but if I could make sure you were told that would be good. He asked me if I had your address. I said I’d have to go and look. I suppose he still doesn’t know you’ve been living here?

Helene clung to the doorknob with both hands.

He’s dead. The landlady must be saying that just in case the message had been misunderstood. That’s what I had to tell you.

Helene took a deep breath; some time she’d have to breathe out again. Yes. Still holding the knob tight in both hands, she closed the door until the latch snapped into place.

If there’s anything I can do for you, Helene, she heard the landlady saying on the other side of the door, will you let me know?

Helene did not answer. She sat down on the bed and took the book on to her lap; she kept blinking: I knew your glance, your eyes, /And deep there, it still seems, /Our fate, our joys arise, /Our love, our dreams. She was reading out loud now, as if she were reading to someone and this was the only way the poem could get out of her. She could not raise or lower her voice even slightly. Helene read the poem through to the end again one last time. The night was over. Then she closed the book and put it on the desk. Helene opened the window. Cold air streamed in. The first streaks of light as day dawned were showing in the sky. There was a pale and delicate tinge of pink among them. She mustn’t take off his vest. Helene washed and put her dress on again. Her shoes were still wet; she had forgotten to stuff them with newspaper. Her coat smelled of yesterday’s smoke.

Helene never managed to get to work that morning. At the last corner, when she could already see the pharmacy’s familiar shop sign, she turned away. She went down the street leading away from the pharmacy. She had not made up her mind where she wanted to go, she had no idea where she could go. She simply put one foot in front of the other. Cars drove past, people walked by, the tram moved on its rails, perhaps squealing, although the city seemed to Helene to be perfectly silent. She was not out of breath, only silent.

Finding it so easy to put one foot in front of the other aroused a memory in Helene, although it went away again at once. Helene crossed streets; she didn’t have to look right and left any more. The pink light had lit up the sky, the world was bathed in pink now, a sallow tone of pink that didn’t suit it. Dark-blue buildings turned violet, and next moment morning had come, there was not a trace of pink left. The pharmacist would wonder where she was. But she was here. She could telephone him and say she couldn’t come to work today. Let him wonder why; she never took time off for sickness, but today she couldn’t, couldn’t go to work. Helene put one foot in front of the other. Tomorrow? What sort of a day would tomorrow be? What could tomorrow be like? Helene didn’t know. She found herself standing at the foot of the broad stone steps in Achenbachstrasse. Otta opened the door and told her that Martha was still asleep and Leontine had gone out an hour ago — she had gone to work.

Helene sat down by the washstand in Martha’s room. It would be only a few hours until Martha woke up. She had been on night duty. Helene was not really waiting, just sitting there and letting time pass. She wasn’t waiting for Martha, she wasn’t waiting for Leontine. Helene wasn’t waiting for anything any more. It was reassuring to find that time passed all the same.

Later, Martha brought her a glass of tea, found her something to eat and telephoned the pharmacist for her. When Martha sat down she held on to the edge of the table, when she walked along she kept touching the wall. Helene knew that there had been something the matter with Martha’s sense of balance for some time. Helene watched the steam rising from the tea in the glass. Martha said something. Helene lowered her head until her chin was on her breast; she could smell him better that way: Carl, the smell of him rose to her from the neck of her dress. Very slightly, so that Martha wouldn’t notice, she raised one arm. Yes, his smell was there in her armpit too, clinging to her along with his vest. Martha said something in a louder voice now, loud enough to make Helene listen at last; she must drink her tea, said Martha, she ought to eat something too. Helene couldn’t imagine ever eating.

She could sit, she didn’t know if she could swallow. She tried it, she swallowed, she put the glass down. That might do for this morning.

At midday she drank the cold tea at a draught and then drank water from the jug on the washstand. The jug was empty, her throat hurt from stretching and closing as she drank. Then Helene sat down again and went on not waiting for anything. Days passed.

If Martha was at work, Helene lay down on her back on Martha’s bed and moaned. Sometimes she wept quietly.

When Martha and Leontine said Helene ought to put on her coat, she put on her coat and followed them. Martha went to number 11 Viktoria-Luise-Platz and brought Helene’s things down from upstairs. She gave Helene’s key back to the landlady and asked her not to tell Carl’s parents that Helene had been living there with him. His parents had paid the rent until the end of the month.

Meanwhile Helene had been sitting on the bench in the square outside the house, watching the basin of the empty fountain and the sparrows hopping about on the edge of the little puddles, dipping their beaks into the water. They were bathing. The water must be cold as ice.

Martha and Leontine wanted Helene to go out as much as possible, to keep moving. Helene kept moving. Martha said Helene had to eat. Leontine said no, Helene didn’t have to do anything. Hunger came back of its own accord. It was good that Helene wasn’t waiting for anything now, not waiting to feel hungry, not waiting for food. Sunday arrived. The plan had been for Carl and Helene to visit his parents that day, Helene remembered. Were his parents praying? God wasn’t there, she heard no voice, no sign appeared to her. Helene didn’t know when Carl’s funeral would be. She didn’t feel brave enough to go to the telephone; she was a stranger to them, after all, and she didn’t want to bother his family, especially now. Time contracted, rolled itself up, folded itself.

Sunday had gone, other Sundays would come and go too.

The sun shone with more warmth now, crocuses were in flower in the beds beside the broad streets. Leontine and Martha said goodbye to her; Leontine was sending Martha to a sanatorium for a month. Dysfunctional equilibrium. What a pompous way of saying she had a poor sense of balance. She had to convalesce and detoxify her body. Martha cried when she said goodbye; she was so sorry that now, of all times, she couldn’t be there for her little angel. Martha clung to Helene, threw her long, thin arms round her so tightly that Helene could hardly breathe. What did anyone need air for anyway? Helene didn’t try to free herself, it was Leontine who had to pull Martha away. Martha was angry, she accused Leontine of hurting her, using expressions Helene had never heard from her before.

Don’t you dare separate me from my sister, you bitch, I won’t be parted from her.

But Leontine was sure of herself, and there was no way around it: she didn’t want to lose Martha, so she must get her out of the city, perhaps for a month, perhaps for two. Leontine took Martha away with her first by physical force, then by dint of severity. Helene heard Leontine still talking to Martha as they left the apartment, much as you talk to an animal, not expecting any answer. Without Martha there, Leontine seemed to feel she had no right to stay in Fanny’s apartment. Helene didn’t ask Leontine if she had gone back to her husband.

She hardly saw Leontine. Once Leontine brought some medicine for Fanny, another time she came to fetch a pair of winter shoes that she had forgotten. Helene went with Leontine to the door, where she turned and placed one hand on Helene’s shoulder. Martha needs me. You do know I have to take care of her now, don’t you? Helene nodded; her eyes were burning. She wanted to put her arms round Leontine and hold her close, but she just blushed. And Leontine let the hand slip off her shoulder again, opened the door and left.

Helene was sleeping alone in the room overlooking the courtyard now; she had pushed the beds apart again. She went to work at the pharmacy and was glad that the pharmacist was reserved in his expressions of sympathy. He didn’t pester her with questions. Yet he could hardly know how numb Helene felt. In spring the pharmacist told her she was getting thinner and thinner. Helene knew she was; her clothes were hanging off her, she forgot to eat, and when food was placed in front of her she ate without any real appetite.

One day a letter for her came from Carl’s mother. She wrote to say she was in deep mourning; life without her youngest child was hard. Was she deliberately saying nothing about her other two sons, whose death, Carl had said, she so persistently refused to accept? Carl was buried in Weissensee cemetery, she wrote. Recent events were bringing some changes to their life. Her husband had been offered a post in New York, and this time they were thinking of accepting it. None of their children lived in Berlin now and their daughter was emigrating to Palestine with her husband. Finally, Frau Wertheimer wrote, she knew that Helene might not welcome this request, but in spite of Carl’s death she herself would dearly like to meet her. Carl had spoken of Helene to his parents with such affection, such enthusiasm, he was so much in love that they were sure he had been planning to tell them about a forthcoming engagement in due form when they were all to have met that day in February. Or perhaps she, Frau Wertheimer, was wrong and the young couple had just been friends? She was writing this letter to invite Helene most warmly to visit them, and asked her to telephone. If for whatever reason Helene didn’t want to, she would understand. She wished her every happiness in her young life and was confident that she would find it.

Helene didn’t want to go. No part of her wanted to accept the invitation. But like her free will, her fears had left her too. If Carl’s mother wished for a meeting so much, she would grant that wish. Using Fanny’s telephone, she called her at their house by the Wannsee and they agreed on a date for her to visit in early May.

She bought white lilac and took it to the Wannsee. A gardener opened the gate to her. A housemaid met her at the front door. Would she like to leave anything in the hall? Because of the warm weather Helene was not wearing a jacket, only her thin organza scarf, and she didn’t want to take that off and give it to the maid. The housemaid took the lilac from her, so Helene stood there empty-handed as she heard a voice behind her saying: Welcome.

Good day. I’m Helene. Helene went to meet the lady.

Carl’s mother offered her hand. I’m Frau Wertheimer and my husband will be here any moment. I’m glad you came. A light floral perfume rose from her. Thank you so very much.

Don’t mention it, said Helene.

What did you say?

Helene wondered whether she had said something wrong. I was very happy to come. The professor’s wife’s eyelids fluttered slightly; for a moment her candid glance reminded Helene of Carl. She looked around.

Would you like some tea? Carl’s mother led Helene through the high-ceilinged entrance hall. Paintings hung on the walls. In passing, Helene saw the Rodin watercolour Carl had mentioned to her. She wanted to turn and look at it, but was afraid his mother might not think that the right thing to do. The dark picture could have come from Spain. In her long, elegant tea gown, which suggested an oriental princess’s evening wear, Carl’s mother walked through the next room. Its tall windows looked out on a garden where the rhododendrons were in bloom, their pale violet and purple shining against the dark green of the smooth leaves. The grass was tall and sprinkled with wild flowers. Insects danced in the air above. Helene knew from Carl that this garden went down to the lake, and they had a landing stage where their sailing boat and a rowing boat were tied up. Over fifteen years ago, Carl’s brothers, lost in the war, had sailed and rowed those boats.

Carl’s mother went into the next room. Chinese vases a metre high and furniture in the Biedermeier style stood there. The wide double doors leading to the terrace were open and the lake lay below. The smell of newly mown grass rose in the air with the warm moisture of spring; the gardener must be cutting it, although he was nowhere to be seen. This was more of a park running slightly wild than a garden, for wherever Helene looked she couldn’t see a fence. Only some white-painted arches showed where a circular rose garden stood a little way downhill.

Shall we sit down? Carl’s mother pulled back one of the chairs and adjusted the flat cushions for Helene to sit in it. The table was laid for three. In the middle was a dish full of strawberries, which must have been imported from the south, since native strawberries weren’t ripe yet. The strawberries lay on a bed of young beech leaves. A parasol provided shade. Birds were twittering in the rhododendrons and the tops of old broad-leaved trees. Was this the place that Carl used to visit on those Sundays when they went out to the Wannsee together and Helene sat reading in the garden of the inn? She had formed no idea of the appearance of Carl’s home when he visited his parents. Vines climbed up the ochre wall of the house, their leaves still young and soft. So was it from all this splendid colour that Carl came when he fetched her at the inn? Perhaps he had sat at this table, on this chair, and looked at the fading blossom of the apple tree as Helene was looking at it now. Did his mother always wear that fine, sweet, unusually light perfume? The fuchsias in large pots and containers on the terrace were putting out their first flowers and large, almost improbably bright green ferns grew beside the flight of steps that broadened as it went down to the garden leading to the water. The colours dazzled Helene’s eyes. She sat down carefully; the chair creaked and wobbled slightly. The tablecloth was delicately embroidered with flowers. Even Mariechen couldn’t have done it better. Helene carefully ran her hand over the embroidery.

Would you like to wash your hands and freshen up a bit?

Rather apprehensive, Helene made haste to say yes. Only on the way back to the house did she take a surreptitious look at her hands, but she couldn’t see any rim of dirt under her nails, or anything else suspect.

The bathroom was made of marble, even the stove was covered with marble tiles, and the soap was perfumed with sandalwood. Helene took her time. They’d wait for her out there. A pair of horn-rimmed glasses lay on the shelf above the stove. Helene recognized them. It looked as if Carl had only just put them down to go and lie on the lounger in the garden and rub his eyes. When Helene had found her way back to the terrace, she heard a male voice that reminded her of Carl.

Carl’s father’s likeness to his son took Helene’s breath away. She just nodded when he greeted her, her lips forming a smile, while Carl’s mother introduced her husband to Helene by name.

The three of them sat down. I don’t have much time, said Carl’s father when his wife poured him some tea. He didn’t say it to Helene, he said it to his teacup, glancing at the large wristwatch he wore.

You’re very pretty, said Carl’s mother and rather shyly, but admiringly, added: And so blonde.

She’s very blonde, yes. Carl’s father drank from his cup quite noisily. It sounded as if he were washing out his mouth with the tea.

So pretty, too, Carl’s mother repeated.

Leave the poor child alone, Lilly, you’ll embarrass her.

Are you studying, may I ask? The professor put this question too without looking at Helene. He took one of the strawberries and put it in his mouth. His wife pushed a small fruit dish with an even smaller fruit knife over to him, no doubt so that he would find some use for it this time, and before Helene could answer she told Professor Wertheimer: No, Carl told us, remember? She’s a trained nurse.

A nurse? It was a moment before the professor could think what to say next. Well, nursing is a very useful profession. A friend of our Ilse…

Ilse is our daughter, Carl’s mother explained.

But Carl’s father was not going to be interrupted. A friend of our Ilse trained as a nurse too and now she’s a doctor.

In London, added Carl’s mother, and asked if she could pour Helene some more tea.

Helene drank her tea. She didn’t want to tell them she was working in a pharmacy now, she didn’t want to explain, unasked, how she and Carl had imagined their future. They had intended to go together to Freiburg or Hamburg, where Helene would study. Probably chemistry, pharmacy or medicine. Carl was in favour of chemistry, she preferred the idea of medicine, but perhaps pharmacy would have been the obvious choice after her work in the pharmacy in Berlin. The snag was that Helene had no money to pay for her studies. But independently of that, her wonderful idea of studying had now moved into the remote distance; it seemed to Helene as if that wish belonged to another, earlier life and was not her own any more. Helene no longer wished for anything. The visions that they had developed, discussed and conjured up together were all gone, had vanished with Carl. The man who shared her memories no longer existed. Helene looked up. How long were they going to sit there saying nothing? Carl’s father had eaten half the dish of strawberries without using the fruit knife. A last trickle of black liquid came from the teapot, and the joy and excitement of Carl’s mother, so palpable at first, seemed to have died down as they sat at the table.

Well, then. Carl’s father took the napkin that he had tucked into his shirt and put it down beside the unused fruit bowl and the little knife.

My husband works a great deal.

That’s not quite right, I don’t work a great deal. I just like working. The professor affectionately put his hand on his wife’s arm.

He has a small observatory up there. Carl’s mother pointed to a terrace higher up the slope, with several telescopes showing above its balustrade.

Only a little one, said the professor, standing up. He nodded to them both and was about to take his leave, but Helene stood up too.

You were so lucky to have Carl as a son. He was a wonderful person. Helene was surprised by her firm and cheerful tone. It sounded like birthday congratulations.

Carl’s mother was crying.

He was her darling, Carl’s father told Helene. Neither of them had said a word about their other two sons.

Carl’s father went over to his wife’s chair, took her head in his hands and pressed it against him. She was hiding her face behind her long, slender fingers. Something about the gesture reminded Helene of Carl, the way he came over to her when she was sad and exhausted, the way he had warmed her cold, tired feet.

The professor let go of his wife. I’ll tell Gisèle to bring you some more tea. Helene was going to refuse it; she didn’t want to stay, she couldn’t bear the silence and the beautiful colours here any longer. She opened her mouth, but no sound would come out, and no one noticed that she had risen to her feet to leave when he did. The professor shook hands with her; his hand was warm and firm. He wished her every happiness, and disappeared through the double doors into the house. Helene had to sit down again.

He was my little darling, said Carl’s mother, with a tenderness in her voice that sent a shiver down Helene’s back. Carl’s mother was kneading her handkerchief on the table in front of her, watching its folds as it fell apart again. Her long fingers ended in oval nails with white half-moons which were so regular that Helene couldn’t help gazing at her hands.

He wanted to marry you, didn’t he? Carl’s mother looked straight at Helene. It was a glance that wished to know everything and was prepared for anything.

Helene swallowed. Yes.

Carl’s mother had tears running down her delicate, beautiful face. Carl couldn’t help it, you know. He was born to love.

Aren’t we all? That was the question that went through Helene’s head. But no, probably we weren’t. Very likely it was a fact that some people loved more warmly than others and Carl really couldn’t help it. She was wondering how the accident had happened and whether she could ask, if such a question would seem to his mother inappropriate, indiscreet. How exactly did he die? On the other hand, Carl’s mother still couldn’t know that they had been going to meet that day, that he had died on his way to her. That she had waited for him in vain.

She would also have liked to know whether Carl had wedding rings on him at the time of the accident, but she didn’t dare ask his mother that. It wasn’t her place. His last intentions were his alone, or perhaps for his heirs too, and his heirs were his parents.

There was still snow on the ground, said Carl’s mother, drying her eyes with her handkerchief. Fresh tears were trickling out and rolling down her cheeks, hanging on her chin, collecting until they were so heavy that they dripped on her oriental dress, where they made dark patches that kept growing larger.

Helene raised her head. We were going to meet that day.

No glance, nothing to show whether Carl’s mother had heard Helene’s distinctly spoken words.

The sun was shining, said Carl’s mother, but snow was still lying on the ground. He slipped and hit his head on the radiator of a car as he fell. The car couldn’t stop in time. They brought us the bicycle. It was mangled. I rubbed it clean. There was a little blood sticking to the spokes. Only a little. Most of it must have been left on the road.

The housemaid brought another pot of tea and asked if there was anything else they would like. But when Carl’s mother didn’t seem to hear her she went away again.

The snowdrops he had been holding were still fresh. The police officer brought us everything. The snowdrops, his glasses, the bicycle. He had a bag of books with him. There were nine marks in his wallet, nine marks exactly, no groschen, no pfennigs. Carl’s mother smiled suddenly. Nine marks, I wondered if someone had stolen money from his wallet. Her smile faded. There was a lock of fair hair in it. Yours? He died instantly.

Carl’s mother dabbed at her eyes, but in vain. It looked as if dabbing them just made the tears flow more freely. She blew her nose, she wiped the corners of her eyes with a part of the handkerchief that was still fairly dry.

Helene sat up straight. She couldn’t sit here any longer, and one of her legs had gone to sleep. My heartfelt sympathy, Frau Wertheimer. Hearing her own words, Helene was horrified by the false sound of her voice. She meant it, she wanted to say it, but the way she had said it sounded all wrong, indifferent and cold.

Carl’s mother raised her eyes now and looked at Helene from under her heavy, wet eyelashes. You are young, your life is ahead of you. Frau Wertheimer nodded as if to emphasize what she was saying, and there was warmth in her eyes such as Helene had never seen in a woman before. You will find a man who will love you and marry you. Beautiful as you are, and so clever.

Helene knew that what Carl’s mother was foretelling, to comfort them both, was wrong. She was saying it, yes, but her words hinted at a subtle distinction: Helene could look for another man, she would find one, nothing easier. But no one can look for another son. The likening of one man to another, the competing functions of a human being, the reduction of that human being to his place in the life of those who loved him seemed to Helene fundamentally wrong. But she knew that to shake her head and deny what Carl’s mother had said would hurt her feelings. It was impossible to compare their grief, and there would have been something cruel in it; each of them was mourning a different Carl.

I must go now, said Helene. Although her cup was still full, she rose to her feet. The chair grated harshly as she pushed it back. Carl’s mother stood up; she had to hold the folds of her tea gown. Perhaps she had shrunk inside it. She pointed to the door with one hand, so that there could be no doubt, so that Helene would start on her way through the interior of the house. Helene wanted to wait for her to go first, but she herself was to go ahead. Do go first, said Carl’s mother; she didn’t want Helene looking at her. Helene heard her walking through the drawing room behind her, past the place where Carl’s glasses lay, past the tall vases and some framed silk embroidery that Helene noticed for the first time, past pastel pictures of herons and moths, bamboos and lotus flowers. They were back in the entrance hall. The Rodin picture was of two women, girls dancing naked.

Thank you for asking me. Helene turned to Carl’s mother and offered her hand.

It’s for us to thank you for coming, she said, and had to move her handkerchief to her left hand to give Helene her long right hand, which was curiously warm and dry, yet damp at the same time. A light hand. A hand that would not be held any more and would itself hold no one’s.

The housemaid opened the front door for Helene and went to the wrought-iron gate with her.

As soon as the gate had latched behind Helene and she could go down the road, past the wood and into the light of the sun shining pitilessly down, she began to cry. She couldn’t find a handkerchief in her little handbag, so she dried her tears on her bare forearm from time to time, and when her nose ran she picked a maple leaf and blew her nose into that. Young oak shoots in the undergrowth. She walked through the wood, past the red-flecked trunks of the pine trees, over protruding roots. Dust rose from the sandy forest floor.