Shorter Days (17 page)

Simon snaps back: “You're out of your mind! Here I am making an ass of myself, coming home extra early so that you can go to your party, sitting around with the kids, and then you come home and curse me for it. It's your own fault you have a hangover! And the kids! Do you want them to see you flipping out like this?” Leonie falls on his words like a dog on a bone. “Oh, now you think you know what's good for the girls? After spending a night and an afternoon alone with them? You're never here, and now you want to play the good daddy, so concerned about their pedagogical needs. You don't care about any of us, you don't give a shit!” She savors the curse words and the volume, she wants to hurt him. “It's only money that got you here, but you'll never really make it—you'll never be anything but white trash from Heslach!” Simon puts his hand up like a traffic cop. “Leo, you must be on your period or something. Stop it!” She can't stop. His calmness only makes her crazier. Finally he shouts back: “You're no different! Who is it that wants to drive a Volvo and buy top-of-the line shit at Breuninger's! Who's the one who never stops comparing my paycheck to daddy's? You could stay home if you wanted to, instead of leaving the kids to rot with those stupid Catholics! They don't teach them anything about real life!”

The bedroom door opens. Lisa and Felicia peek in. They look small in the big white doorframe. Feli has her thumb in her mouth and Lisa is holding her sister's hand. “Mama, Papi, what . . .” They shrink back when Leonie shrieks, “Can't we even get five minutes alone? Get out! You don't need anything in here!” The milk bottle stands within reach. Colorful boats sail over white waves toward a glass horizon. She closes her hand around the neck and flings it in Simon's direction. The glass clatters and milk runs down the wall. Leonie feels like laughing at him, the way he's staring at her like a creature from another planet. Yes, he's never seen her like this. He looks like someone ate his slice of cake. I'm not your cake, but you can bite me! She thinks of Delia from Buenos Aires who fed her Mario deadly sweets. They keep screaming, Heslach versus Feuerbach. The game is tied, and they go into overtime, saying things like, “You can't even get it up any more,” but suddenly Simon isn't looking at Leonie. Nor at the white shards in the corner. The fleet is scattered to the four winds: red, yellow, blue, green, dear St. Martin come and see. Simon points to the door: “The kids—where are they?”

They rush through the rooms without looking at each other. Leonie's office pumps clack through the halls. Music drifts from the kitchen, a warm female voice backed by slow strings:
Across a thousand dreams, to the edge of time, here we are in paradise
. There are three defrosted pizzas on the table: red circles in white dough frames, olive eyes, tomato nose, pepper mouth, bits of cheese on the floor, overturned stools, a slipper. She opens the window and looks out. The Posselts' old mutt is wandering around on the sidewalk across the street; it sniffs, then stops, tail tucked. There's no one to be seen, but the streetlights are on.
When the love is true you feel no doubt, here we are in paradise
. “Are they in their bedroom?” Leonie turns to Simon, who answers immediately: “No, I was just there.” He paws through the children's coats in the hallway closet with both hands. The wooden animals over the hooks grin smugly. “Their jackets are gone, both of them.” Leonie grabs her coat from the closet. St. Anthony brings back what's lost, you just have to pray hard. Together they run down the steps to Constantinstraße.

The street lamps hang over the middle of the dark street from their wire trapeze, a garland of glowing white-orange rectangles that get smaller as they get farther away up the hill. The air smells of exhaust and the damp chill of evening. There are more cars on the road now, people are busily parking, turning, circling the block. People Leonie has never seen pull out keys and enter neighboring buildings, their hands full of plastic bags. “Where could they have gone?” Simon is pale, his head whips in every direction. Leonie shrugs. “I don't know. But probably they went a way they knew. Down the street, to the bakery, to Nâzim's shop.” Simon grabs her hand. “Nâzim, that's it! Let's ask him—he knows everyone in the neighborhood, he knows what they look like, maybe he saw them go by!” Leonie snatches her fingers back as if he were trying to rob her and runs off. The litany of prayers running through her head—let me find them, let them be safe, let them be alive—is interrupted by names associated with tragedy—Dutroux, Tosa-Klause—and images: stuffed animals, bouquets of flowers and tea lights, cardboard signs with “Why?” scrawled in Magic Marker, along with the silent, frighteningly normal-looking faces of the perpetrators. I'll never eat chocolate again, I'll never lie, I'll never fuck, dear God, I'll never scold them again. She'd screamed at them, yelled in their little faces. Felicia's downy hair, Lisa's pout. How will I be able to live if I never see them again? As she runs, she automatically turns her head to the right and stares into the dark abyss of a garage. First stop and look—the cars might not see you. The girls won't be paying attention tonight.

Nâzim smiles at them when they fling open the door. The glockenspiel jingles wildly. Leonie is in such a hurry that she knocks over a basket. Lemons roll across the floor, glowing yellow between dark green leaves. Nâzim lets out a surprising cry, but she pushes onward, paying no attention to him or to the couple drinking espresso at the high table. She runs into the next room with the crates of drinks and the row of refrigerators full of shimmering glass and bottles, bends to check every corner. Leonie's hope is so powerful that she thinks she sees their pink jackets and fleecy hats. But there's no one there, not even by the quietly humming ice cream freezer.

A heavy smell of fruit hangs in the room, like in an orchard. Here everything ripens at the same time—even the lilies bloom in the window, exuding a soapy fragrance.
FRUIT OF THE GODS
, Leonie reads on one of the wooden crates. Inside, tissue paper enfolds each orange like a treasure. There are pineapples, with green-gold skins notched with diamonds and prickly, cactus-like crowns, peaches, crimson under their silvery fuzz, and grapes that look like polished glass. Next to them, bananas lie in yellow bundles, and gleaming apples are stacked in pyramids of red, yellow, and green.

It's Simon who's finally able to speak. He breathes heavily, but he's the one who asks the question, his sneakers surrounded by lemons, the whispering of the espresso drinkers at his back. Leonie comes back to stand next to him and to hypnotize Nâzim with her eyes: Say yes, say yes! Make him say yes: Yes, I saw them! “Nâzim, we're looking for our girls, Lisa and Felicia. Have they been here? Or did they walk by?” Nâzim's brown forehead furrows. He strokes his cheeks and closes his eyes as he thinks. They're dark and without a hint of comfort: “Oh I'm so sorry, but I haven't seen any girls. It's been busy this whole time, but there haven't been any children. Only little Mattis and his mother, half an hour ago. I'm sorry. What about the police?”

Leonie has heard enough. She turns to leave. Each minute spent here is a minute wasted. She wants to go, she tugs at Simon's jacket. He crouches to pick up the scattered fruit. Nâzim touches his arm. “You don't have to do that—just leave it, I'll take care of it. Should I call the police . . .?”

The glockenspiel on the door jangles again. It must be Lisa and Feli coming in, silent and pale, with a surge of cold street air and dirty shoes, their mouths turned down. It must be their hands holding the crumpled plastic bag. What are they thinking? They're not allowed to play with plastic bags. She wants to speak, but no sound comes out. And what is Nâzim making such a fuss about? Soon they'll start to cry—he shouldn't yell at them like that. He stands with his index finger pointed in accusation: “What do you want here, you little rascal? Don't come in my store again, understand? Get out of here, you filthy scum!” As Nâzim slowly drops his raised fist and takes a step back, as Simon comes to Leonie and murmurs, “Shit! What the hell is going on?”, and the espresso woman shrieks, Leonie sees a black object in the child's small fist. It looks ugly. Where could they have gotten it? Probably found it outside, Lisa always has to pick up everything she sees. She'll read them the riot act as soon as they get home. She hears a soft clanking as the child's other hand takes a bottle from the bag and puts it on the floor.

“Are you crazy? What are you doing?” Nâzim whispers.

“Where's the dough, you Turkish pig? Pull it out, chop chop! Or this place is gonna blow, I swear it.” And as Leonie thinks, Your mouths should be washed out with soap for that kind of language, she sees the boy standing in the middle of the shop. The beautiful boy, dirty-blond under his hood. Candy-moocher, fountain dreamer, bag holder. Again, the tear-inducing disappointment. It's his hand, so tender for a boy's, that holds the pistol—a black weapon in a dirty hand connected to an arm that disappears into the sleeve of a cheap nylon anorak. The espresso woman and her companion have ducked for cover, murmuring as they do so. Simon grabs Leonie and holds her close. She can feel the tension of his body. He mutters: “What a load of bullshit, god damn it, bullshit!” She reads the words on the bag, sees sneakers, drooping pants, pale face, Nâzim's raised hand. She and Simon cling to each other. The boy takes another step toward Nâzim and screams: “Pull out the money! Get your chickpea can, you gay ass-fucker, you weakling!” Nâzim trembles. “I only have what's in the register. I don't have money in the store. Just the register!” The boy's eyes are close-set and bright. At this, his delicate brows draw together. He screams, spittle flies: “You're lying, you pig, you're lying!” Leonie doesn't dare to move, and Simon breathes out quickly. There's a screech from behind them: “Come on, just do what he says! Give him the money!” The boy spins, now holding the weapon with both hands. “Get down on the floor and shut your mouths, or I'll finish you!” She lies next to Simon, the first in the row. Spooning on the cold, tiled floor. He's still clutching her arm. Behind her the espresso woman's coat rustles. Her companion groans as he rolls onto his side. The boy sticks the weapon into Nâzim's back. The black muzzle bores into the starched white of his shirt. “I'll open the register, I'll open it, here!” The metal drawer rattles out. The boy reaches in with one hand, grabs a bundle of bills, and then there's a clinking as coins fly through the room. “Are you shitting me? Where's the can? The can with all your cash, pull it out, this is fucking bullshit!” Nâzim's face contorts; Leonie wants to shake him. Crying, he points to the drawer: “There, that's everything!” The sneakers stamp. “You're lying, I know it, Murat told me, give it to me, I need the fucking can!” One hand reaches down for the bottle, fumbles with the top, frantically unscrews it. The top rolls across the tiles, under a rack full of pasta and Italian cookies. “I'll show you now—I'll show you all! Don't move, or I'll shoot!”

Window washing, Leonie thinks. Frau Kienzle comes to wash the windows. The light blue rags, the yellow chamois, the green bottle of denatured alcohol. The boy shakes the contents of the bottle over the floor, over the fruit baskets and crates. He does it with a light touch, like a housewife spraying laundry to be ironed, moving the bottle in shaky arcs. It gurgles brightly, and single drops catch her hair, her face. Nâzim stands in a puddle, his face frozen in fear. The bottle falls to the floor. Then the boy is only a black shadow behind the beaded curtains that separates the merchandise from the back room. He pulls the trigger. A little flame flickers out of the black mouth of the weapon and licks the tip of a match that the boy is holding up between his thumb and index finger like a tiny flower, glowing yellow edged with blue. Leonie screams and sees Nâzim throwing her scream back to her like an echo, his mouth open wide and arms flung high, she hears Simon and the couple behind her. She feels pee running out of her, warm and wet. The boy sticks the pistol down the front of his cargo pants, pushes the curtain aside, and flings the burning match on the counter.

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, and 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.