Shorter Days (18 page)

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.”

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.

The revolving door turns, ferrying a constant stream of new people from the darkness into the lobby, like a tireless glass paddle-wheel. Fathers with pizza boxes. Mothers speaking loudly into phones clamped to their ears, lowering their voices once they get inside, then putting away their devices and falling silent. A plump old woman carrying a brown faux-leather suitcase in one hand and a huge stuffed animal in the other. She walks purposefully towards Judith. The toy, a fat snake with huge plastic eyes, sticks out a long pink tongue, fleecy and accurately forked.

The woman's face is red and moist. Tears run down continuously under the dirty lenses of her glasses, rolling over her fat cheeks and soaking into a scratchy-looking scarf. “Ya know me—I'm Mattis's grandma. Ya drove him and Hanna here, right?” She takes a tissue from her jacket and blows her nose hard. She'd come to visit her grandson, the poor fellow. Station 12, as usual. The hospital had called and told her that Hanna was to blame for Mattis's sickness. She'd been feeding him stuff this whole time: poison, laxatives, emetics. They'd tested his blood last time, and now there was no doubt. Hanna had always been a sly one. She couldn't even stand to look at her daughter any more. They'd taken her away to another clinic. What had she done to deserve all this?

Judith is glad that Mattis's grandmother doesn't wait for an answer. She takes her snake and stands in front of the elevator, which Judith has been keeping in view the whole time anyway. She gets in and disappears. Judith shrugs. She feels both pity and horror, like when she sees news of a catastrophe on television. And just as she fades the news with the touch of a button, she closes her eyes to conjure up a different image in her mind.

The cold outside does her good. She leaves her jacket unbuttoned and takes out the Rothändles. She shoots out the smoke with a deep sigh, causing the smoker next to her to surreptitiously turn her head away. A slip of pink paper covered with stamps peeks from the pocket of her jogging pants, which is already bulging with the cigarettes and lighter. “The pink meal voucher and slippers—that's how you can tell who really belongs here,” Hanna had said with a touch of pride, as if discussing membership in an exclusive club. The other woman stubs out her cigarette in a sand-filled concrete receptacle. She nods at Judith and shuffles her wide behind inside. I didn't let myself go like that: same clothing size, even after two kids. He'll be able to see that, even under this scarecrow get-up.

At the same time, she wonders how he'll react to her body, with the silvery stretch marks under her belly button, the sagging breasts, the delicate violet network of spider veins on her thighs and around her ankles. She looks at her reflection in the window. Her face isn't bad, particularly the eyes. They've lost the dazed, sheep-like look of the mother, the Klaus-wife, the housewife, they're alert and excited. She finds floral wire in the pocket of this damn jacket, a tin with herbal lozenges, but no lipstick, not even chapstick. She bites her lips to make them look redder and reaches for hairpins, only to draw her hand back, empty.

The gardening clothes feel like a Mardi Gras costume. A cocoon, that would be another word for it. A cocoon is what peels away to reveal a butterfly. Will she do that today, peel away the earth-colored rags the way the insect sloughs off the chitinous brown shell to become something beautiful, something better? A glimmering silvery creature that spreads its wings and rises upward. Into the beguiling light of a scorching flame? Into a fiend's crushing fist? What do I want to be? Scarecrow, housewife, Klauswife, Mama, porridge-cook, bottom-wiper, floor-scrubber? Or shall I instead step back out of the warm stink, back out to the shining, snow-capped, neon-white peak of the Hackstraße landscape, where the streams of vodka and tequila flow clear, where the night is always artificially illuminated and the day is slept away in a twilight of drawn blinds? Where the story always resolves in the long-awaited embrace, suffocation by Sören's tongue, burial under his flesh, the flesh which he never allowed her to truly join?

Why is she even thinking of that? She'll never undress for him again. Why doesn't she just go home? She could take Hanna's Renault, if it hasn't already been towed. Or she'll take the streetcar from Schloßstraße. Subway to Österreichische Platz. Ten minutes and she'll be back where she belongs.

Sören walks through the revolving door. He still wears the bomber jacket, black jeans, biker boots.
Some people call me the space cowboy, some call me the gangster of love.
His gym bag hangs from his left shoulder. He tosses it under the bench. “You really waited?” His eyes look tired behind the glasses, which are flecked with tiny drops. Judith nods. “It's finally Friday, and you're really still here. I heard from Jasper that you got married—some bullshit engineer.” Judith sees Jasper's fox-like Young Union face in her mind, the fencing scar marring its milk-fed look, and has to push the image from her mind before she can answer: “Klaus is a professor at the University of Stuttgart.” Sören grins, his tired expression vanishing. He takes the coffee from her hand and sips it. “Ugh, it's barely lukewarm. Twenty-hour shift—bullshit from start to finish. That last one was the icing on the cake.” He crumples the empty cup in his fist and furrows his brow. Judith looks at his mouth. She wants to stretch out her hand and trace the sharp outline of his lips with her finger. “Klaus—he was that tool who lived under you. Blond guy. Must be a drag, or you wouldn't be standing around here in the cold with dishwater coffee.” Sören touches her arm. Judith closes her eyes—she wants to hurl herself into the abyss of his touch. Now it's happening, and I'm letting it happen, I'm letting the cocoon fall away. “Sören, please don't.” She whispers the old, nearly-forgotten phrase, the preface to their every encounter. He begins. He throws down her things. He's the one that calls the shots. He reaches for her arm, but instead of Judith's desired flesh he touches the rough fabric of her jacket. “Can you imagine if someone had told you six years ago you'd be out in public like this? You look like an eco-freak! But Klaus probably likes that.” She wants to answer, wants to say something cynical and poisonous, but the words won't come—she can only stand there and wait until the dissonant overture ends and the feature presentation begins. She's surprised by her hunger, her naked desire for his touch; she stares at his hands with their trimmed nails, his skin taut from washing and disinfectant. All she wants is for him to overpower her in the darkness of her Hackstraße room; she can hear the squeaking of the pull-out couch and smell Sören's sweat. How many times did it happen—a hundred times, a thousand, just one more time. Sören has long since dropped his hand from her sleeve. He picks up his bag and shakes his head.

“Typical Judith. Standing and waiting, just like old times. I can't handle the way you look at me. This wasn't a good idea. Go home to your little Klausie. I'm getting out of here. I'm tired, and I've had enough bullshit for one day.”

It would be cheap to run after him, of course, to grab his leather jacket and not let go. Ridiculous to scream, “You asshole! You've always been an asshole!” It's degrading how he took her hand and then let it go: both careful and determined, like the way she unclasps Killian's fingers from her clothing one by one when he throws a tantrum. It's utterly final, the way he walks out the gate, disappearing into the darkness with his swift steps, shaking his head all the while.

Judith walks slowly through the Österreichischer Platz underpass, its walls covered with colorful metal plates. She pauses briefly by one of the orange ticket machines and leans her tear-stained face against the wall. She hears Sören's voice in her ears, unrelentingly repeating the same insults, both old and very fresh. She has no reply, and she presses her fists against her eyelids, feels her pulse racing behind them. She wants to go home, to the medicine cabinet, to her Tavor. How much will she need to make it silent, to smother the piercing whispers in her head?

She goes out the Christophstraße exit. Wheezing her way up the hill, she passes the community center, with announcements posted in its windows: gymnastics classes for kids, healing by therapeutic touch. She stops again at Mozart Platz to catch her breath. The restaurant on the corner is full. Judith doesn't see individual faces, only the contentment of those inside: undisturbed, free of anxiety.

The traffic light across from the nursing home turns green. She hurries across the street and rushes past the wooden statue of St. Martin, who towers huge and jagged over the beggar who huddles beneath him, sheltered under the edges of his coat. “Where's his sword, Mama? He doesn't have a sword. If he doesn't have a sword, why's his coat sticking out like that?” Kilian and Uli always complain that the saint, who's supposed to be a knight, carries no visible weapon. But now she's not Mama, she's a pill-addicted slut whose past could be material for a porno directed by Tarantino. The dainty, perfectly cleaned and appointed apartment that she now so longs for, the warm glow of the lamp over the dining room table, the flowers in the windows, the nature table with its felt dwarves, decorated for winter—all could dissolve at any moment into a panopticon of abomination. Suddenly, instead of oats and semolina, bluish-black fetuses float in the jars on the kitchen shelves. As a baby, all of Goethe's limbs were bluish black, and behind the curtain in the bedroom lurks the hydrocephalous boy who's to be raised by Steiner until the day he starts college. His grin is spiteful, his high forehead bulges like a roll soaked in milk. Judith runs up the steps at the top of Bopserstraße, sobbing. Something's burning—a strong, scratchy smell makes her cough. She tries to force different images into her head as she runs.

Uli and Kilian: the Hans-Thoma-children with apple-cheeks and blond curls, well-adjusted and healthy. They're at the Posselts', they'll feel a little sick, but that's not so bad. She can cure that. Klaus will come home, like he does every Thursday. A few stories from the university, a few light, dry kisses on the corner of her mouth, cheeks, forehead. They'll talk about the children. Later, a glass of red wine on the sofa, his arm around her shoulders.