Raven Sisters (Franza Oberwieser Book 2) (4 page)

Precisely,
Franza thought with satisfaction.
That’s the way of the world.
Sometimes you just needed the simplicity of a clear worldview.

Franza left the store and the mall and went out into the sunshine. She walked with a swing in her step, thinking of nothing, of everything, of nothing.

5

Backthenbackthenbackthen . . .

Back then the world was small, yet huge. Enormous. Much bigger than today. Big houses, people, trees, sky. The perfect size for those giants whose bellies were level with your head. From a child’s perspective, with your head at hip level, voices were from above, looks from above.

Mama had baked cakes and as always wore that necklace, with the little balls, around her neck, the balls she said were called
pearls
and very, very valuable. Gertrud must take care and not be too boisterous when she threw her arms around Mama’s neck or the necklace could break and then the pearls would get lost.

Mama rarely baked. It was usually Sabine who did that with the weekday chores. Mama did the chores on weekends, as well as she could, but she was a doctor and not particularly good at housework.

Today was the weekend, a special day. Today Gertrud would be getting a sister, and that was why Mama had baked a cake.

Three days ago, Mama and Papa had come to Gertrud’s bedside, given her a cuddle, and Mama had asked, “Gertrud, would you like a sister?”

Gertrud had just turned seven, and yes, she really wanted a sister, a little doll that she could mother and drag around with her sometimes, and then when she cried hand her back to Mama or Sabine or even Papa.

Her reply was full of enthusiasm. “Yes! Yes, I do! When?”

She peered at Mama’s belly, but Mama’s belly was as flat as ever, so it was going to be a while.

“At the weekend,” Mama said with a smile and stroked Gertrud’s head, delighted at how easy it had been. “This weekend!”

Gertrud was amazed. How could that be possible? Three weeks ago her best school friend’s mama had had a baby, but it had taken a long time, many weeks and months. Brigitte’s mama’s belly had gradually grown bigger and fatter and had then finally spat out the baby, Brigitte’s little brother. And now it was going to happen so quickly? Gertrud was amazed.

Perhaps, she thought, God had blessed Papa with a little magic and all he had to do was click his fingers and the baby would appear and Mama didn’t have to get really fat. Perhaps it was because Papa was an important man, a man who always went to work in a suit and tie, a man who had offices in the town where he helped everyone who came to him and where the rooms were so tall and so wide that the world seemed a little bigger and Gertrud was paralyzed with awe.

“What a good girl,” Frau Umlauf, Papa’s secretary, would say every time Gertrud visited, as she stroked her hair.

“Do you remember Hanna?”

Gertrud looked at Papa. “Hanna?”

He nodded. “Yes, Hanna. She was here once. The daughter of Frau Umlauf, my secretary at the office. Don’t you remember?”

Yes, Gertrud remembered. Hanna was a thin, pale girl with carroty hair. Anyone who had hair like that was to be pitied. She had been to their house once because Gertrud’s father needed her mother at work. So Sabine had gone to fetch the child, so she wouldn’t be home alone. At first, although they were a similar age, the two girls had not known what to make of each other, but Sabine had finally managed to get them to play together.

“Hanna’s a poor little girl,” Mama said. “She has no one left anymore, so she’s coming to live with us now. You have to be nice to her.”

Gertrud was amazed. She couldn’t say a word—at first. Later, she couldn’t stop asking questions.

Hanna had no father. Gertrud knew sometimes people had no father. But Hanna had no grandma or grandpa either, and no aunts or uncles, no one at all. That happened, too. But now Hanna had no mother. Her mother had not died exactly, but was effectively dead. She’d collapsed like a stone and now she just lay there like a stone. It had happened two weeks ago in the office, in the middle of taking d
ictation.

“Isn’t it dreadful?” Mama asked, stroking Gertrud’s hair. Gertrud nodded and snuggled up to Mama’s belly and Mama’s bosom and put her arms around her neck. She thought she should be careful with the pearl necklace so the pearls didn’t roll away.

That night Gertrud slept badly, waking up in fear several times, dreaming of mamas who simply collapsed and didn’t get up anymore. Three days later, Papa drove off and came back with Hanna. She had nothing but a small suitcase and a doll called Helga, with blond braids. She was given the room next to Gertrud’s, which Mama and Sabine had quickly prepared and which would be made much more cozy over the coming weeks. Hanna didn’t talk much that first day. Mama and Papa made up for it by talking more, perhaps because they didn’t really know what to say. In the evening Papa called the social welfare office and reassured them that everything was OK and that he would see to the paperwork as quickly as possible. He was an attorney, and it wouldn’t be a problem at all.

When everything was dark and quiet in the house and everyone was asleep, Gertrud woke in fear again. She climbed from her bed and crept out onto the dark landing, something she had rarely done. She slipped along to the next door, opened it, and darted into the room and into the bed in which the little girl lay—the little girl who had no one left in the world. She jumped when she felt the strange body next to her and then immediately put her arm around Gertrud’s neck, hugged her close, and began to sob—softly, but sobbing all the same.

“Shhhh,” said Gertrud. Hanna slowly calmed and stopped trembling. Gertrud said “shhhh” once again, then stroked her carroty hair that shimmered in the moonlight and thought how pretty she was, so pretty
. . .

They eventually fell asleep, the children, the little girls, the sisters who weren’t sisters but who eventually became sisters. They embraced each other in their sleep and became one another’s support, anchor, burden.

I have a sister now,
Gertrud wrote in the red book she had been given for her last birthday.
A sister is for life.
My sister is called Hanna.

It was lovely to have a sister, someone you could share everything with, all your joys, all your pain. It was horrible having a sister, someone you had to share everything with, all Mama’s caresses, all Papa’s kind words.

6

Tonio stood on the hill, observing the house. He knew he must be a bit mad to be observing them—spying on them—like this, but he did it anyway.

“You have to stop this,” Gertrud had said after he’d called her for the third time, asking her to meet him. “It’s going nowhere. I can’t tell you anything about your father. I knew him, sure, but not particularly well. He’s dead, leave him in peace. Enjoy your inheritance and just get on with your life.”

He called a fourth time.

“If you don’t stop harassing me, I’ll have to tell the police,” she said.

But she had not called the police, which emboldened him and gave him confidence. He continued to follow her, approaching her on the street. He could see she was beginning to unravel; panic taking an ever-increasing hold of her. But still no police.

So my gut feeling’s along the right lines,
he thought.
There’s something in the air, something
. . .
bad from when my father was still alive. I have to know what it is. I just have to know! Perhaps this is his legacy to me, his gift. Perhaps it will be my downfall, this knowledge, but I can’t have it any other way. I owe it to him, my father. I owe it to myself!

No, he couldn’t have it any other way. He was Tonio’s son. He bore his father’s name and looked like him. His father had never even seen him. His mother had been a mere one-night stand for this man, not even a brief affair. There was no connection between father and son, nothing—only the name and the resemblance. It was probably a curse. Gertrud was probably right that he should merely enjoy his inheritance and be done with it. A father like that was owed nothing, absolutely nothing.

Tonio remembered the day, just a few weeks ago, when he had finally gone to pick up the letter from the notary’s office. It had been an awful day. There’d been another death on the ward before his shift ended. He got in his car and revved the engine. Over by the pond Rasmus stood smoking, staring into space, his face vacant and expressionless.

Asshole
, Tonio had thought, amazed at his own anger, which was o
ut of all proportion, based on nothing but that dumb grin Rasmus always wore on his face. He was such a suck-up. He needed a good beating. Tonio wished he could hold him down and let him have it!

As Tonio turned out of the parking lot, he saw Rasmus getting smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror. Once Tonio could no longer see him, he finally did what he had been longing to do all along: he stuck up his middle finger and yelled at the windshield, venting his anger not only at Rasmus, but at them all, the whole world, the temples of shopping, the fitness centers, the sales talks, the peace and harmony—all of it. If he was hoping for relief or release, nothing of the sort came. The air remained dull, and the rain that had been threatening all day finally came down from the sky, turning the day so dark and oppressive it seemed as though the world were about to end.

At the traffic light Tonio stared at the circle of red that seemed to hang from the sky. When he narrowed his eyes, the red blurred into the gray of the sky, boring into his vision and his body as the wind whipped the rain through the car’s open window. Tonio felt the cold, sharp bite of the rain lashing into his face, his arms, his brain. He wished for the end, and he waited and waited, but the end didn’t come.

As if from a vast distance, he heard the angry blare of a horn from the car behind him. The light had long since changed to green, but he was glued to the spot, nailed in place.
Assholes,
he thought.
You’re all assholes. Up yours!

And he thought of Rasmus again and the constant grin he used to keep the world at bay. He thought of the hospital and the ranks of the sick who lay there, some of them close to death. He wanted to—needed to—get away to another life. He thought of the puke, the pus, the succession of running sores.

Behind him horns blared, lights flashed—rage, irritation—new, different sores. He flung open the car door, leapt out, and gave them all the middle finger. He spun around and yelled, “Shoot me; why don’t you just shoot me?” Then he ran off across the junction, arm and finger still aloft, while brakes squealed and horns blared. The car stood abandoned at the light, its door still open—a nuisance, a lump in the throat, a stomach ulcer.

He saw a sign for the U
-Bahn and stumbled toward it and glided down the escalator into its cathedrals of silence. He boarded a train, and the strange silence that reigned there calmed him.

He’d once seen a young man take a running leap into the rumbling path of a train, the darkness of the rails. As the young man vanished, Tonio thought of blood, of spilled brains, of pulped flesh, and turned away, leaving behind a knot of passengers who suddenly seemed united in their horror, their screaming, their gawking.

“Retards,” he had muttered. “Fucking retards!”

There’s no getting away from it,
he thought as he got off the U-Bahn and lost himself in the crowds, with their umbrellas and dark-colored hooded jackets.
There’s no getting away from this town, it craps out its viscous, sticky slime into your brain, then releases you, but only a little; you jump like from a trampoline, flung into the air, and it pulls you back and starts the shit all over again.

“What’s up with you? I thought you drove?” asked Kristin when he arrived home dripping wet. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Why should there be? Don’t bug me.”

He went to the bathroom and lay down in the tub. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t switch off.

Shit,
he thought.
Shit, I’m losing control.
It was all getting too close, eating into him—the hospital, his ward, the cancer cases, the half dead. Their eyes were already misted over with visions of the next world, the existence of which he seriously doubted.

But he couldn’t tell them that, and when they spoke of going over to the other side, entering a new life—be it white, red, or yellow, whatever kind of world they envisioned—and reached out for his hand in search of his affirmation of their hopes, he sometimes thought he would die himself of despair and shame. He had absolutely none of that damned hope.

There were no lines anymore. He felt it. Everything penetrated his thoughts, his feelings. He wasn’t even free at home. There was no hope of washing it away in his bathtub or in his washing machine. Later, he knew, the images would seep into his sleep, his dreams. Like spiders, they would spread their webs, and he would finally be caught, a sticky package of prey, a chunk of meat that they would suck dry. Once he was spent, they’d spit him out and head off in search of new victims.

That was how it was. A slow suffocation. Burnout. The exhaustion, the vague fear burrowed into him, coming at him in constant waves, breaking over him and making him tired and lethargic. The waves robbed him of his breath and blocked his thoughts.

He shuddered and noticed that the water had grown cold. Kristin stuck her head around the doorway.

“Are you hungry?”

He nodded, wondering at her placatory voice and her kindness despite the way he’d snubbed her earlier. When he came out of the bathroom, she had already begun cooking.

“Did you pick up the letter?”

He was curt. “You ask me that every day. What do you care?”

She looked up, brushing a lock of hair from her brow with the back of her hand. “The card states that it’s a notary’s letter. That means it’s important. Who knows, maybe it’s an inheritance.”

He barked out a brief laugh. “Me? An inheritance? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

She threw the knife on the table and turned on him, eyes blazing. “You know what? I don’t have to take that kind of thing from you. It’s my area of expertise, in case you’ve forgotten. I know that if it’s a lawyer’s letter it won’t be just a parking ticket.”

“OK, OK,” he replied in a soothing tone. “It’ll be fine.”

“Go and pick it up,” she said sharply. “You’ve got fifteen minutes until they close.”

“OK, fine.” He sighed. “If it makes you happy. Will you lend me your car?”

She asked no questions, merely got her keys from her purse and threw them over to him.

When he returned, the letter in hand, she had set the table. He smelled fresh pasta, salad, and seasoning, and felt his stomach tighten with hunger.

“Open it,” Kristin said.

He opened it, and there it was in black and white: He’d had a grandfather in a town on the Danube, two hours’ drive to the south. He’d died and there was a will to be read. Tonio’s presence was required.

Tonio and Kristin stared at one another.

“You do have an inheritance,” she said. “I knew it!” She shook her head in amazement and laughed. “When? When’s the will going to be read?”

He looked and got a shock. “In three days. Only three days!”

She shook her head again.

“Because you took so long to pick it up,” she said. “Idiot! Idiot!”

They eventually calmed down a little, convincing themselves that he would be left a few books or some old records and that would be the end of it. They finally ate the pasta, which had gone cold, and over a glass of wine, she asked about this grandfather. Tonio knew nothing. His grandfather had never been there for him, and why would he when there was no father?

Later, he slept with Kristin, or rather tried to. Somehow it just didn’t happen—too much wine, too many thoughts.

“Shit,” he said and rolled off her. What a load of crap.

“Hey,” Kristin said, stroking his back. “It happens.”

He shook her off roughly, then stood and opened the door to the terrace. It was still raining.

“What’s up now?” Kristin asked impatiently, and he suddenly knew she would leave him. If not today, then tomorrow or the next day. Soon, in any case.

“Nothing,” he said. “Doesn’t matter. Leave me alone. Don’t keep asking me about things that don’t concern you.”

“What?” This time she was seriously shocked. “How messed up are you? And how drunk?”

She jumped up, pulled on a shirt, slipped into her jeans, and ran from the room.

Tomorrow then,
he thought and made a bet with himself, wagering a bottle of deadly absinthe. He imagined the persistent sharp taste the drink would leave on his tongue and thought the mark Kristin left behind on his life wouldn’t run anywhere near that deep.

He went back to bed and waited for his mind to still, but it didn’t. There was not a trace of stillness.

Kristin was banging around outside the room.
What the hell is she doing?
he wondered impatiently, longing for a drink to shoot through his body. The banging of the front door shot through him instead.
Ah,
he thought,
today.
So I’ve lost my bet. A pity about the absinthe.

In the morning he found her key in the kitchen with a note asking him to pack up the rest of her things and leave them outside the door.

Nothing else.

He went into the bedroom and opened the wardrobe, his eyes gliding over the few clothes that hung on hooks and lay on the shelves in there. Then he took a large shopping bag, threw all her belongings into it, and put it outside the front door. There it could stay until Kristin came to fetch it. Then at last it would be final.

A brief guest appearance,
he thought,
only six months.
The intervals are getting shorter.
He was surprised to feel a slight hint of regret.
Alone again,
he thought.
No one waiting for me when I come home, no smell of morning coffee, no fresh bread.

He shrugged, picked up the wine bottle that was still on the table from last night’s dinner, and poured the last drop down his throat, instead of coffee. It tasted lousy, and he pulled a face, but it suited the emptiness he was feeling and the fact that Kristin had left.

Oh well,
he thought,
there’s always Degenhard.
She would always take him back; her love was big and hopeless, and life didn’t always throw up a beautiful woman around every corner.