Shorter Days Page 18

  Judith

  The boy in yellow pajamas pulls the wooden pig’s black leather ear over its eye like a pirate’s eye patch. Then he pulls it back and looks at Judith, a grin on his pale face. Judith’s smile comes late—it takes great effort to turn the edges of her mouth upwards. The clock on the wall reads ten past six. Outside the glass windows in the foyer of the Queen Olga children’s hospital, the “Olgäle,” there is darkness, broken only by the lamps in the garden. The large room inside is filled with an overpowering white brightness that forces Judith to look more closely than she really wants to.

  The little boy bores his index finger into the pig’s nostrils. Rolls of fat spill from beneath his hiked-up pajama top. His dark eyes are nestled in fat like berries in a pudding bowl. The child’s left hand is wrapped; a clear tube pokes out from between the strips of gauze. The foyer is filled with moving children. Almost all of them have the same bandage-covered drip in the backs of their hands, in addition to other bandages in a variety of places. A girl hides her hairless head under a striped hat. They wear fake fur slippers on their feet. Most of the slippers are decorated with oversized animal heads that seem to sniff at the ground. The sick children play on a wooden ship that’s beached in the middle of the room or climb on wooden animals near the windows.

  The toys and the photos on the wall, taken at a summer party or during a visit from the clinic clown, feel to Judith like whistling in the dark: pitiful attempts to hide something dreadful. It makes her think of ancient mummy portraits: the face of the living painted atop a casket that conceals the desiccated flesh hanging from its skull. Since she entered the hospital, images such as this one have been chasing each other through her head. A large aquarium is installed in the wall. Across from it, a plaster bust of the hospital’s sponsor stares benignly out of a glass case, looking quite unregal in a bonnet. A kiosk offers racks of self-help books, comics, and coloring books. A father in a leather jacket puts fifty cents in the slot to run the electric train. The Märklin train rolls by, its subtle clattering and the shouts of the spectators drawing most of the children over to watch.

  Judith sits near the kiosk. Tables with matching chairs are scattered around the room; in the huge space they look like leftovers from the foreclosure sale of some shabby ice cream parlor. From her spot Judith can see the two elevators, their doors constantly opening and closing. She watches the red numerals on the display and holds her breath each time “G” appears and the smooth humming ends in a jolt.

  As dusk was falling, Judith stood on Constantinstraße with a basket on her arm. Where are you going, Little Red Riding Hood, what have you got in your basket? Apples and crispbreads for my children—they’re playing in the back garden, even though it’s almost dark. Hanna and Mattis walked toward her along the sidewalk. The wide reflective strips on his jacket caught the light of passing cars. Judith noticed the boy’s sluggish gait. He’s been in kindergarten far too long, she thought. Hanna strode onward, her right arm stretched back like a taut leash that connected her with the slowly trundling Mattis. Judith opened her mouth to offer some formulaic greeting. She wanted to make it as short as possible—to avoid a long drawn-out chat, further tales of Mattis’s illness.

  While her sons carefully hung lanterns on the elderberry bush, taking a quick moment to marvel at their colorful swaying, Judith fetched a shovel from the shed. There was crap to clean up, and it made her angry: a small, crumbly pile right next to the children’s flowerbeds. With two stabs of the shovel she made a hole and buried Schlamper’s droppings. Who else’s could they have been? They’d better not make a habit of using our garden as a doggie toilet, just because they can’t manage to get the animal out for a walk anymore. Judith packed the dirt down hard. The boys had disappeared into the bushes, accompanied by the flitting beam of the flashlight. They dove joyfully into a darkness that wasn’t nearly as impenetrable as the thick, uncuttable black in the unlit woods of Judith’s Kirchheim childhood. The dense violet dusk over the small garden plot between Constantinstraße and Olgastraße was perforated by the gleaming yellowish squares from the apartment buildings that surrounded it, the orange-tinted white of the streetlights, and the languid arcs of headlights gliding past. Judith didn’t have the heart to call Kilian and Ulrich back in. It was supposed to be dinnertime in a few minutes. But today she allowed a departure from the routine. She wanted to grant them this adventure in the dark garden: their hands touching the knotty trunk of the apple tree that’s no longer visible, but that can suddenly be felt and smelled. What’s it like to be swallowed up by the night, holding your brother’s hand—what if you hear an owl or a bat? Both visit the garden on occasion: Judith had hung up special birdhouses she’d bought from House of Nature in Degerloch. She felt content and completely present. She wanted to savor the rare sense of complacency that only came when a scene from her life looked and felt like a painting by Hans Thoma, to enjoy it alone, without Hanna and Mattis.

  Then Mattis fell to his knees, laid low as if by a shot from the darkness. His hand slid out of Hanna’s grasp. He doubled over and retched, rolled on the ground just a few yards from Judith’s dirt-smeared rubber boots. A foamy yellow substance bubbled from his mouth. Judith screamed and pressed her hand over her mouth. Hanna dropped her shopping bags and Mattis’s little backpack. Brown paper bags of fruit tumbled out of her cotton tote. She tore a ring of keys out from under her poncho and ran down the line of parked cars to her rust-speckled, poison-green Renault. She opened the door, folded down the passenger seat and was instantly back beside the gagging Mattis, whom she picked up as if he weighed nothing at all. Judith watched in horror as his hands clutched and clawed at his small Adam’s apple. Hanna came to Judith. Her breath was hot and smelled bad. “You have to drive us to Olgäle, they’re the only ones who can help now. I can’t drive—he needs me.” Her voice was surprisingly loud and sounded frightened. “But . . . an ambulance, I could call an ambulance,” Judith stammered. Mattis writhed under the black seatbelt that Hanna had laid across his chest, he hung out of the colorful car seat whose stuffing had burst on one side, wracked by cramp-like attacks of vomiting. White artificial cotton spilled out of a rip in the upholstery next to Mattis’s head, and Judith involuntarily stepped back when she saw only the same white in his rolled eyes. Then came a dry retching. Hanna had already wedged herself in beside her son. Her inconspicuous mousiness had given way to a powerful determination. “This is a typical reaction. Probably he ate something his body couldn’t tolerate at daycare again. I’ve said so many times that he’s allergic to nuts, to all dairy, to wheat, but no one listens. We know, don’t we, my poor baby? You’re my poor, poor baby.” Judith nodded mechanically, the keyring that still radiated Hanna’s warmth in her hand, but she turned back once more. “I have to let the children know. Wait just a second, I’ll be right back.”

  The two lanterns swung among the black branches. The boys had covered the sandbox and two shovels were stuck in a hastily made hill; she saw footprints. She heard rattling and giggling from the playhouse, saw the flashlight beams flitting like a will-o’-the-wisp. Judith decided not to interrupt. She set the snack basket down hard on the ground. The apples knocked against each other. The glass door to the Posselts’ living room stood open, swinging lightly back and forth. There was a light on in the hallway. “Frau Posselt, I’m just leaving the boys in the garden for a bit! I have to help a friend—her son needs to go to the hospital!” She hadn’t waited for an answer. The old people were surely there—they were always there, unshakeable as statues. From somewhere in the back of the apartment Schlamper gave a short yelp. Probably they were just sitting down to dinner. The dog’s claws clattered on the parquet. Judith ran back to Constantinstraße.

  “Ane, ane!” a young boy cries, stretching toward his mother, who sits at a table by the window with three other women who are wearing headscarves and long coats. As if choreographed, all four simultaneously reach beringed hands into Tupperware boxes to fish out sweet pastries, meatballs, an
d white bread and hold them out to the child, who toddles over and eats greedily. Judith turns away, reminded of Hackstraße: scrunched napkins with the pungent-smelling remains of döner kebab under the sleeper sofa next to pools of her own vomit. The Turkish kebab seller’s earlier reproachful look as she downed the four small bottles of Jägermeister one after another, right before Sören’s eyes. She teetered on her stilettos as she consumed them—each wrapped in light brown paper like a mini-mummy. At the same time she thinks of her own children, whose fresh-air-reddened faces are probably at this very moment paling in the Posselts’ overheated living room. Piggishly they gobble down the soft cookies with orange filling, regardless of how musty they taste, simply for the forbidden sweetness of cheap industrial sugar. They’ll wash it down with ice-cold lemon soda until their stomachs are completely gummed up. Judith knows they’ll both spend the night hanging over the edge of the bed with fat, puffed-out bellies, jittery and pallid, emitting rancid burps. Hourly dispensation of carbo vegetabilis and magnesium carbonicum will be necessary. It’s too late now, anyway. It won’t kill them. Klaus will pick them up. I’ll get there sometime, but not now. Probably much later. She continues to stare at the elevator doors.

  She’s tried to reach Klaus twice, to tell him to end his meeting early—the meeting that usurps his Thursday evenings. He should go get the boys. That’s a father’s job. She steps once more into the carpet-lined alcove where the pay phone hangs. The phone smells unfamiliar and feels greasy. She feeds in some coins and hears Klaus’s calm voice on the answering machine: “Please leave a message after the tone.” She knows the department number by memory. The secretary picks up after the first ring and explains to Judith that Klaus is long gone. The meeting she’s talking about is always in the morning. She thinks only briefly of Klaus, who had smiled at her this morning, his blond curls still damp from the shower, his light-green shirt far too springy for an October morning: “Don’t forget I’ll be late tonight—another lousy department meeting!” When did that burdensome but inescapable command come down from the dean? Half a year ago? Longer? Judith shakes her head, then leaves a message: “Klaus, I’m at Olgäle, with Hanna and Mattis—there was an emergency. Please pick the kids up from Frau Posselt—I have to stay here, and it could get late.”

  Hanna had guided Judith through the evening rush hour. Her voice came loud and sure from the backseat, drowning out the awful gagging and whimpering sounds. Mattis’s breaths came so fast that Judith stopped counting them. She sweated and gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Turn left at the next light.” In front of the hospital Hanna steered her to the right, into Hasenbergstraße, a no-parking zone. “The garage will take too long.” She carried Mattis in her arms: a bespectacled Pietà with the corpse of a tiny Christ, who’d puked himself to death before he could be crucified. She knew the way well and ran through the gate while Judith trotted behind her; the glass revolving door pushed her inside. Hanna hurried past a forest of signs: ORTHOPEDY, ONCOLOGY, EMERGENCY ROOM. Teddy bears and colorful cars covered the walls and doors, mobiles dangled from the ceiling, and cartoon ducks grinned from posters.

  Mattis’s head drooped and his blond hair was dark with sweat. His eyes were closed. A nurse in light blue scrubs came down the hallway toward them. “Back again, Frau Bodenwerder? Poor Mattis!” Judith stood against the wall and watched as the familiar routine played out, watched as confident hands lifted Mattis onto a paper-covered examination chair. She felt unbelievably relieved to see him taken out of Hanna’s arms. The big packages of medication, the latex gloves on the shelves behind the chair, and the kidney-shaped cardboard bowls that Mattis was given to vomit in—all infused her with confidence. “The doctor will be right in.” The nurse and Hanna were quite friendly. They whispered together, bent over the reclining figure, whose vomiting had finally stopped. The nurse gave Hanna a quick hug. “You’re a brave woman.”

  The doctor entered a few minutes after their arrival. Judith recognized him immediately. Instead of a white coat, he wore jeans and a checked shirt. His chin was unshaven. He walked to the chair with swift steps and took the child’s blue-veined hand in his. “What are you getting up to that keeps landing you here, pal? Do you know Bob the Builder? The guy who fixes everything?” He pointed to the pin on the front of his shirt. Judith was familiar with the bulbous fellow in work pants. Kilian had recently stopped to look at a larger-than-life-size Bob in a display window on a shopping trip: “Who’s dat, Mama?” Judith denied him the real answer: “Some guy.”

  Now Sören—DR. SÖREN RÖNNE was inscribed on his name tag, there was really no doubt that it was he—took off the little guy and pressed it into Mattis’s hand. “Bob is my buddy. He and I are going to fix you right up. We have to take a close look to see what’s going on, so Frau Urban is going to take you down to sonography in the wheelchair. You know the drill. I’ll be right behind you.” Mattis didn’t look at the plastic figure. He closed his eyes and turned away. Sören nodded to the nurse. Together they lifted Mattis into the wheelchair. Sören opened the door and the nurse pushed the chair through. They went down the hallway and disappeared into an elevator. Meanwhile other nurses entered the room and gathered around Hanna, who had suddenly grown belligerent: “I have to go with my son! Let me through! He needs me!” Sören turned and looked at Judith, into her eyes, then immediately at her breasts under the camel-colored sweater. Her eyes were wide: only constant re-reading of the plastic tag—DR. SÖREN RÖNNE, CHIEF RESIDENT—could convince Judith that it was really him. It was more tangible than his general appearance, which had something ghostly about it: Sören’s face looked so young—still the face of the student from back then. He still wore the same glasses, with the same offensively shiny metal frames. There were dark rings under his eyes, but no wrinkles, no gray hairs. His blond crew cut was thick and bristly. Without makeup, Judith felt naked. She knew the skin of her throat and around her eyes looked papery and grooved, that you could tell she dyed her hair—especially if you were a man like Sören. He saw her ugly jacket, with the leather patches on the elbows, and her dirty rubber boots, too. The only good thing was the V-neck of her sweater, which revealed her tender skin. Tender, but no longer taut and smooth. The neon light made her old. She felt withered and powerless. How long had it been since she’d seen him? Gerhard Schröder had become Chancellor, George W. Bush president of the United States; the Twin Towers had fallen and burned, Saddam Hussein had been executed, and Angela Merkel elected. The farmers had begun planting rapeseed, and the bakers baking organic bread; the price of oil had risen, and now Dr. Sören Rönne had come through the door to meet Judith Rapp, and the two recognized each other immediately.

  She’d often stopped on the street thinking she’d seen him: walking across the Schloßplatz, the back of his head rising above the crowd of shoppers who strolled between the mighty sandstone columns of the King’s Building. In the streetcar, when she suddenly heard his voice blustering about VfB’s performance in a recent game. In line at a tea house, when a shadowy figure appeared, silhouetted between the sun-drenched rose beds and square pools with water glinting like liquid silver, a latte macchiato in each hand. Judith was so relieved when she saw the latte-drinker’s dark hair that she’d bought Uli and Kilian Italian ice.

  Hidden behind her sunglasses, she’d played the game out to its conclusion. What would you have done if it had really been him? Showed off the children perhaps, with proprietary smugness, since she was sure he had none. Or perhaps risked her own skin, in which, on that summer afternoon, she’d felt comfortable. She was no longer a sequined Hackstraße floozy, she was Frau Rapp, with a wedding ring. That was as far as Klaus figured in these fantasies. His usual “Forget about that asshole” has no power to call her back. She stands up and walks toward the kiosk to get a coffee. He’d pulled her out of the exam room: “You’re not getting away this time. This is my last case of the day. Go down to the lobby and buy me a coffee with lots of milk and sugar. I’m sure you remember. I’ll be down soon.”r />
  Judith didn’t turn to look at Hanna, who stood against the wall, surrounded by nurses. White and light blue scrubs with dark, blonde, and gray-streaked heads formed a living wall that she couldn’t break through. “I have to get to my son! I have to be with him! Where have you taken him?” Her voice shrilled through the placating murmurs. Judith saw her small face under the velvety hairband. Her long-suffering and composed countenance had disappeared completely. Hanna’s mouth, which had so tentatively sipped from the rim of Judith’s teacup, then quietly said, “Yes, that’s what everyone says, that we mothers work the hardest,” was now open wide. “Are you related to her?” Sören asked. “No, she’s my neighbor. I drove her and Mattis here.” “It’s best if you go now. We have everything under control.” Sören led her into the hallway. She felt the warmth of his hand. Then he turned to the group of nurses who were pleading with Hanna. Arms and heads turned and twisted, hands spread out like fans. It reminded Judith of eurythmics. Hanna stood in the middle of the graceful bodies, her movements going against the flow, jagged and unbalanced. From the hallway, she watched Sören put his arm around Hanna’s shoulders and conduct her past the reception desk and into the nurses’ room. He shut the door emphatically, and Judith stared for a long time at the sign, DO NOT DISTURB: SHIFT-CHANGE IN PROGRESS, and at the glowing pink salt crystal on the reception desk, the bouquet of asters next to it, the child’s drawing on the wall: “For station 12 from Graziella, Kim, and Mustafa.”

  The kiosk is busy. It’s primarily women waiting. Most look tired and neglected. They wear sweatpants and slippers. Judith orders two cappuccinos. Her fingers encircle the full paper cups; they’re painfully hot. I want to get out. I need a cigarette. Judith shoves her fists into the pockets of her gardening jacket and feels the crumpled package of Rothändles. She’ll sit right near the entrance, by the bronze sculpture: some geese and a flute player. More animals. There are too many animals here. She’ll fill herself with smoke, so that she doesn’t have to see the hospital any more. Only Sören, who will part the thin gray curtain with a single look. Eyes like blue fog lamps. He took one look at me and knew everything. Next to the pack of cigarettes she feels the enameled lid of the matchbox with the colorful sea horse. She lit the children’s lanterns with it, ages ago, on Constantinstraße. Now she’ll light one up. No more hiding and sneaking around, the hand with the cig propped casually on her hip: cool, like Anita Berber.