Little Grey Mice (51 page)

‘Is that what you think I'm trying to do? Build up so much responsibility that I shan't be able to go?' demanded Ida.

‘I haven't thought about it so analytically,' said Elke. ‘Maybe that's what you're trying to do. And if you are then it means you don't
want
to go, not truly: that you're just trying to ease your own conscience when you make the final decision and tell Kurt it's all over.' Elke was utterly indifferent to the conversation: for the first time ever she realized she couldn't give a damn about Ida or any of Ida's problems. All she wanted to do was to persuade Horst to help her and get back to Kaufmannstrasse. Would the telephone ring tonight? The stomach pain came again, several short snatches. And then the nausea, rising like a belch. Elke realized that she couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten. Not yesterday – that awful yesterday – apart from the morning apple cake at the Bonner. Nor today, either. She wasn't hungry; didn't think she could have eaten anything.

‘You despise me, don't you?' challenged Ida, suddenly.

Don't! thought Elke: please don't! She said: ‘I despise the agonized prevarication.'

‘Didn't you prevaricate, once?' said Ida, with rare venom, wanting to wound.

Elke didn't feel wounded. ‘Once,' she admitted. ‘Not again.
Never
again.'

‘I hope you don't have to go back on that,' said Ida, bitterly.

‘Yes,' conceded Elke, in complete and firm control of herself. ‘I hope I don't, either.'

A chilling silence, like a block, descended between them. Like so much else it would have upset Elke a few months ago: that afternoon there wasn't the slightest discomfort. The children called and waved: neither Ida nor Elke heard the words. They waved back. Ida said: ‘They know, about Horst and me. That we don't get on.'

‘Good,' said Elke. ‘It won't be so much of a shock for them if you decide to run off with Kurt, will it?'

‘You have something to tell me?' demanded Ida, presciently.

‘No.' The denial came out at once, quite definitely. ‘Why?'

‘You don't seem yourself.'

‘I'm fine.' That was a lie that was going to be exposed in a very few days. Elke became anxious to get away. ‘You said Horst wants to see me?'

‘I'll call him.'

‘Don't bother. I'll go up. And then I think I'll go.'

‘Yes,' Ida accepted, making no effort to detain her.

Elke shouted her goodbyes to the children as she went into the house, shouting again to warn Kissel that she was on her way as she climbed the tattered, frayed stairway. He was at the bedroom door to meet her, gesturing her inside. The table at which he obviously worked looked as if it had just settled after an explosion.

‘I was hoping Otto would come today,' announced Kissel.

‘He's away, working.'

‘I've finished another story I wanted to give him. Could you let him have it?'

A favour for a favour, thought Elke. She said: ‘Of course.'

Kissel handed her an unsealed envelope and said: ‘I think it's one of my best. They've accepted every one, you know?'

Elke did, from the regularity of the loan repayments. ‘So I understand.'

‘You'll see he gets it soon, won't you?'

‘As quickly as possible.' Then she said: ‘And I'd like you to do something for me.' She offered Kissel the paper on which she'd copied the Audi registration, from the scribbled note on the back of her chequebook. ‘Could you find out the owner of that car? It's an Audi. Grey. I don't know the year of manufacture.'

The man frowned. ‘I don't have any connection with vehicle registration,' he protested.

‘But you must know people who have at the national traffic registration office in Flensburg,' persisted Elke, determinedly. ‘You
could
find out, as a favour, couldn't you? It wouldn't take more than a telephone call to a friend you could ask.'

‘Why do you want it?'

‘A very minor traffic thing,' she evaded easily. ‘Not a drama, like before.' She spoke looking down at the envelope containing Kissel's latest story, an obvious reminder of his indebtedness.

‘It would be strictly against regulations,' said Kissel.

‘I haven't told Ida I'm asking you. Or Otto. It would just be between the two of us.' She didn't want to remind him of the money.

‘Couldn't you get it through the Chancellery?'

I don't want to be personally connected with the inquiry, you stupid bastard! She said: ‘I thought you would know better than me how to go about it.'

‘I'll try,' undertook Kissel, grudgingly.

‘It's really quite important to me.'

‘I'll call you tomorrow.'

Elke indicated the telephone number also on the paper she had given him. ‘That's my Chancellery number: call me there during the day.'

She drove slowly back to Bonn, the stomach pain and sickness more persistent. At Kaufmannstrasse she swallowd some analgesics, wondering if she could keep them down, relieved when it appeared she could. She should eat something, she told herself. Elke actually opened the refrigerator, frowning in, attracted towards nothing. She was closing it again when she saw the opened bottle, in the door recess. She poured herself a glass, carrying it back into the main room. The envelope she had collected from Horst lay on the coffee table where she'd tossed it as she entered. She picked it up, put it down and picked it up again. It wasn't a private communication, something that was none of her business. If it hadn't been for her, Horst would not have met Otto and developed the extra source of income in the first place. The envelope was unsealed, even. And didn't he intend it to be read by thousands of people when it was published? Elke read intently, not hurrying, carefully replacing the pages one on top of the other as she completed them, her wine forgotten.

She was so absorbed, in her impressions as much as in the story, that at first, incredibly, she did not realize what was happening. It was the worst pain of all, pulling her forward in the chair, that was her first awareness, and then she felt the wetness, a lot of wetness. Elke groped upright, still bent forward by the pain, and staggered tight-legged towards the bathroom, suspecting the mess she was making. She was haemorrhaging badly by the time she got there, her skirt and underclothing deeply stained. For a long time she crouched over the toilet bowl, whimpering at the pain but most of all at the fear, not sure if she should try to get back to the telephone to call a doctor. Slowly she stripped her clothing off where she sat, seeing it was all ruined, dampening a small hand towel from the wash-basin alongside to try to clean herself. She wasn't very successful but it was better.

Gradually, too gradually, the pain began to ease and the flooding too, although for a long time that was imperceptible as well, so she remained where she was, too frightened to move. She felt very weak, her legs trembling under her weight, when she finally tried to get up. She did so only briefly, just to get a tampon from the cabinet. She had to clean herself again after even that little movement, and realized a tampon wasn't going to do it. Sitting once more, she fashioned a thick pad from a larger towel, holding it to herself until she could put on fresh underwear to keep it in place. She wrapped the already stained clothes in the earlier towel and bundled them into the corner of the bathroom, to be disposed of the following morning. Whimpering again, this time from the sheer effort, Elke swabbed clean the floor in the living-room and bathroom: she had to stop frequently, staying kneeling as she was, when dizziness swirled around her. Once she recovered to find she had toppled sideways, and supposed she had momentarily lost consciousness. Her stomach still ached but there was no nausea. She decided against calling a doctor: she could manage by herself.

She was laying another towel over the bedsheet, for additional protection, when the telephone rang. Elke hesitated and then groped towards it.

‘Where have you been? I've been worried as hell! I called several times today when I thought you would be home!'

‘I left early for Marienfels. Then I called in to see Ida.'

‘Your voice doesn't sound right. What's wrong?'

‘I'd already gone to bed: was almost asleep. My period's very bad this time.' The contradiction screamed in her head. Not my period! I've just miscarried: miscarried your child while you were fucking someone else!

‘Would you like me to come round?'

‘No!' The weakness of her voice took away the force of the rejection.

‘Tomorrow?'

‘I'll come to you, at Rochusplatz.'

‘You're sure I can't do anything?'

‘Positive.'

In bed Elke curled practically in an ironic foetal position, because it made the pain better. And cried. There was no specific reason: no one thing that filled her mind, for her to focus on. It was everything: she cried bitterly, uncontrollably, about everything. Everything and nothing. Maybe nothing – having nothing – most of all.

The following afternoon a subdued Horst Kissel called Elke's Chancellery number and said the grey Audi, number BN-278, was registered in the name of Ms Jutta Sneider. The address was in a block of apartments in the Nord-Stadt district.

‘It wasn't easy,' Kissel complained.

‘But you did it, didn't you?' said Elke. She believed she could understand her sister's indifference to the man.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

He'd always prepared, made her think for months that every time they met was special, but she had the feeling tonight that he'd prepared more carefully – tried harder – than before. The glasses were out, the wine opened, the flowers displayed, a soft, beguiling orchestral movement already playing. All so welcoming: welcoming and loving and intimate. All so false. Reimann held her close to him – although careful again, not too tightly – and she made herself hold him close in return. She made herself kiss him back, too, with the same fervency. He kept an arm around her shoulders, walked her to a chair and settled her. As he did so he knelt at her side, which Elke considered to be taking the supposed attentiveness too far. He retained her hand, as well. He'd held the hand of a woman called Jutta Sneider like this, Elke thought. With which of them did he practise?

‘You should have let me come last night.' He'd wanted to – almost insisted upon doing so – because of the way she'd sounded. And he should have done, ignoring her refusal. She appeared wan, pale-faced: unsteady on her feet, even. He didn't like her to be as frail as this. The feeling wasn't professional.

‘I didn't want you to.' She'd expected to be more repelled, more resistant to any contact with him than she was. She'd actually enjoyed his touch, wanting it. Wouldn't lose, she reminded herself.

‘I've been with you before when it's happened. A lot of times. I could have looked after you.'

Elke refused the conversation. Instead, things arranged in her own mind, she said: ‘How was your trip?'

Reimann got up from his kneeling position, shrugging. ‘All right.'

‘Are you worried you didn't get what you wanted?' It was a serious question, but cynically Elke recognized the ambiguity.

The opening he should take, Reimann recognized: curiously, inexplicably, he was reluctant to seize it. He did so, however, but with effort. ‘It's still not complete: I've got the financial figures and statistics but I'm still short of the political background to fit it all together.' He'd told her he was going to Frankfurt, to investigate the financial pressures and uncertainties caused by the changes in the East.

‘Where did you stay?' asked Elke, another rehearsed question.

‘The Steigenberger,' replied Reimann, at once. She looked positively ill, which she hadn't at other times, no matter how bad her period.

‘You didn't tell me, before you left. I could have called you. Just to talk.' She could expose his lie, by checking with the hotel. But why should she waste a telephone call? She knew already that he was lying.

‘I didn't think: I'd hoped it wouldn't take me as long as it did. And I did try to call you.'

So Jutta Sneider was a good fuck, worth staying with. Elke said: ‘We shouldn't do that again. I'd like to talk to you, when you are away.'

‘You're right,' Reimann accepted. He'd find an escape, when the moment came. But he didn't want to do that, either. Not cut himself off from her. The reflection unsettled him because it wasn't the sort of reflection he should have had.

‘Did you have a good time?' It was a question Elke had particularly planned, and she asked it intent upon his reaction.

‘A good time!' echoed Reimann, bemused. He nevertheless considered the question, answering it for his own satisfaction. No, he decided. He hadn't had a good time: the entire weekend had been an ordeal, from beginning to end. He'd feigned and faked everything: affection, interest, consideration, sex. His only interest had been how quickly time would pass, so that he could leave. Aware of Elke's attention upon him, Reimann said: ‘I was working, all the time. I ate-not very well – and worked and slept.'

‘And you come back to find me like this!' tempted Elke.

‘I've come back to find you unwell and it worries me,' said Reimann. ‘I was thinking, while I was away. If it's going to be as bad as this we should get some professional advice. I don't want it to go on: I want it fixed.'

‘It won't be as bad again,' said Elke. Like everything else, she'd worked that out. He was good at seeming genuinely concerned.

‘You can't possibly know that,' argued Reimann.

‘Let's see what happens next month,' said Elke. ‘I'm not going to waste the time of a doctor or specialist unnecessarily.'

‘Just one more month,' he insisted. He poured the wine at last, handing her a glass. Close to her again he said, sincerely: ‘I missed you. I missed you like hell and could hardly wait to get back.' That remark wasn't professional either.