The Blind Side of the Heart (12 page)

For her father’s own sake, Martha arranged to keep him in a carefully calculated state of intoxication. It was meant to last until she had managed to abstract morphine and cocaine in sufficient quantities to be effective from the Municipal Hospital. Martha had been working with Leontine in the operating theatre for some time, and she knew the right moment when such substances could be purloined. The ward sister was of course the only one who had the key to the poison cupboard, but there were some situations in which she had to entrust it to Leontine. Who, later on, was going to measure exactly how many milligrams this or that patient had been given?

Next morning Mariechen made Father a new nightshirt. The window was open; you could hear the crows perching in the young elms outside. Mariechen had hung the girls’ quilts over the windowsill to air. In the evening they smelled of wood and coal. Helene had gone down to the printing works, and had spent some time sitting over the big book with the monthly accounts when the bell rang.

A well-dressed gentleman was waiting outside the door. He stooped slightly and his left arm was missing. With his right arm he was leaning on a walking stick. Helene knew him by sight; he had sometimes come to the printing works in the old days.

Grumbach, he introduced himself. He cleared his throat. He had heard, he said, that his old friend, the master printer who had published his own first poems, was home again. More throat-clearing. It was six years since they had met, he said, and he really felt he must pay his friend a visit. The moist sound as he cleared his throat was obviously not shyness but a frequent necessity. No, Grumbach wouldn’t sit down.

It’s a long time since we last met, Helene heard him telling her father. She couldn’t take her eyes off Herr Grumbach; she was afraid that he was coming too close to her father with all that throat-clearing. Her father looked at him. His lips moved.

Perhaps he might feel better tomorrow? The visitor seemed to be asking himself this question rather than anyone else; he looked neither at Helene nor the maid. Clearing his throat once more, he left.

Contrary to expectations, the visitor did ring the bell again next day. His eyes lit up when he saw Martha, who was not on duty at the hospital that day. He left his umbrella at the door, but politely declined the cup of tea that Helene offered him.

Next day he did accept a cup of tea, and after that he came to visit daily, without waiting to be expressly invited. He drank a great deal of tea, emptying cup after cup, and noisily munching the sugar lump in it. The sugar bowl had to be refilled at every visit. With his remaining thumb, the one-armed guest indicated his back, which still had a shell splinter from the war left in it, so that he walked with a stoop and needed a stick. He avoided mentioning the word hump, but said he was feeling fine. He cleared his throat. Helene couldn’t help wondering whether the splinter in his back might have injured his lungs and that was the reason for the constant throat-clearing. Over the past few months, said the guest happily, he had written so many poems that he now had enough to put together in a seven-volume edition of his complete works. He deliberately ignored the fact that his old friend couldn’t answer him, for after the latest injection given to the invalid by his tall and beautiful daughter, his mouth seemed too dry to speak.

Although Martha told Helene to go downstairs and help Mariechen to stone, gently heat and bottle plums, she stayed where she was. The winy aroma of the plums rose to the top storey of the house, getting into every nook and cranny, and clinging to Helene’s hair. She leaned back. She had no intention of leaving the visitor alone with her father and her sister Martha.

How nice that we have time for a good chat at last, said Grumbach, probably appreciating his friend’s customary silence.

Helene looked at the walking stick. Its finely carved ivory handle was in curious contrast to the three little plaques he had screwed to the stick itself. One of them was in several colours, one gold and one silver. At a distance, Helene could not make out what was embossed on them. The further carving at the lower end of the stick showed that it must once have been shortened above the metal tip. Very likely Grumbach had owned that stick for years and years, and after the war its original length had had to be adjusted.

The visitor never took his eyes off Martha as she reached up to open the top of the window. You remember me, don’t you? Old Uncle Gustav? Uncle Gusti? said the visitor, looking Martha’s way, and he must have been glad of her kind smile, which might mean anything, either that yes, she did remember him or that she was pleased to see him again.

Grumbach had settled into the wing chair near his friend’s bed, but he could sit there only if he stooped over. He was sucking his sugar lump to the accompaniment of the familiar throat-clearing and a slight smacking of his lips. Such a big lump of sugar called for good strong teeth, but since his third back molar had recently broken he preferred to suck it.

Uncle Gustav, whispered Helene to Martha at the next opportunity, she couldn’t help giggling. The attempt at familiarity and the term Uncle that he used to convey it struck Helene as so outlandish that, in spite of Uncle Gustav’s obvious frailty, she was on the verge of laughter. The silence was punctuated by his slurping tea with his mouth half open. Helene couldn’t take her eyes off him. She saw his gaze wandering over Martha as if their hospitality gave him licence to stare openly at her. At her shining hair pinned up on top of her head, her long white neck, her slender waist, and most of all at what lay below the waist. To all appearances, the sight made Uncle Gustav feel proud and happy. Until a few days ago he had been permitted only to watch Martha from afar; now he felt really close to her at last. Like most of the men who lived near the printing works, he had watched her growing up with a strangely mingled sense of amazement and desire, the latter suppressed only with difficulty. Grumbach made sure that her other admirers remained at a suitable distance, keeping as beady an eye on them as they did on him. Seeing his old friend at home again gladdened his heart no less than the chance it gave him of gaining access to the house and the company of his friend’s daughters. As the guest now watched Martha carefully cleaning the hypodermic needle, turning her back to him, busying herself at the washstand with cloths and essences to help the wound to heal, it was easy to let his walking stick and the hand resting on it move a few centimetres sideways, so that next time Martha turned he could feel the rough fabric of her apron on the back of his hand. That slender waist and what lay just below it. Obviously Martha didn’t even notice the touch; the folds of her dress and apron were too thick; she kept moving this way and that near the washstand. With sly glee the guest relished the way her movements stroked the back of his hand.

Helene watched Uncle Gustav widen his nostrils and sniff. She felt sure that nothing escaped him, that he noticed the aroma of coffee in the air, and while Martha’s involuntary stroking excited him, he might be wondering whether to ask Helene to bring him a cup. He enjoyed sending his friend’s two daughters around the house in search of this and that. Although Martha had warned him not to smoke when he was with her father, he had asked her to bring first an ashtray for his pipe, then a glass of wine, and later he had not turned down the porridge that Helene had made for her father, although Father could eat hardly any of it.

What smelled so good, Grumbach wanted to know every day as he arrived at the house around noon, as if by chance. Rhubarb pudding, a casserole of beans baked with caraway, mashed potatoes with nutmeg. Grumbach said he hadn’t had a watch since the war, adding that without a wife or children you could easily lose track of the time of day. So it was all the more surprising that he came to visit just in time for the midday meal.

When Martha and Helene had helped him to some of everything, hoping he would feel well fed and go away again, Grumbach just stayed put in his chair, cheerfully rocking back and forth, and making himself at home. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, he would unstrap his wooden arm and hand it to Helene to be put in the corner.

How wonderful to see everything growing and flourishing, said the visitor, as his eyes caressed Martha’s back. When she made her father’s bed, bending far over it, her apron parted slightly at the back to show the dress underneath. It seemed to the man that she was bending over just for him.

All gone to rack and ruin, said Helene’s father, blinking.

What, Father? What’s gone to rack and ruin? Martha was at the washstand again, and the guest in the wing chair was getting the back of his hand stroked by her apron.

The house, just look at the paint peeling, flakes of coloured paint everywhere, big ones.

It was true that little had been done to maintain the house in the years of his absence. No one had bothered about the paint, which was fading up here under the roof and peeling off the wall like dead skin.

Grumbach was not to be distracted from his silent lust by his friend, the girls’ father, deploring the state of the house. The touch of Martha’s dress seemed to him too sweet for that. Only when Helene stood up did Martha turn to face them. Her slightly flushed cheeks were shining, her little dimples looked enchanting. The innocence that the guest could read in her wide eyes might make him feel some shame. Helene hoped so.

Can I help you? Helene asked Martha, with a sharp glance at the guest who liked to be called Uncle Gustav.

Martha shook her head. Helene squeezed past Martha and the visitor, and knelt at the head of the bed.

Are you awake? Helene whispered to her father. Since his return she had felt she must speak to him formally. He lacked the ability to overcome the reserve between them in words or by showing her any attention.

Father, it’s me. Your little girl. Your golden girl.

Helene took her father’s hand in hers and kissed it. I’m sure you wonder what we were doing all the time you were away. Her tone was imploring. She wasn’t sure whether her father heard what she was saying. We went to school. Martha taught me to play piano studies: Desolation and then the Well-Tempered Klavier, Father. I’m afraid I don’t have the patience to play the piano. And three years or more ago we went to the railway station with Arthur Cohen and his baggage to see him off. Did Martha tell you about that? But just think, Arthur couldn’t join up to fight in the war. They didn’t want him.

A Jew, said Grumbach, interrupting Helene’s whispering. He leaned back in the wing chair and added, with a derisive click of his tongue, who’d want the likes of him?

Helene half turned to him, just far enough for him to have to see her gaze fixed on the back of his hand as it touched Martha’s dress, and narrowed her eyes. The guest breathed heavily, but he left his hand where it was, on Martha’s apron. Helene supposed he saw that as his due reward for saying no more. She turned back to her father, kissed the palm of his hand, his forefinger, each finger separately, and went on.

When Arthur reported for military service, they said they couldn’t call him up without proof of his residence in Bautzen and they wouldn’t send him to any regiment. Arthur objected, until they finally gave him a medical and told him he had rickets, he’d be no use in the war. He’d better go to Heidelberg and study there, they said, if he had the money and recommendations he’d need. In case of doubt, a young doctor would be more use than a soldier with rickets.

Helene’s father cleared his throat. She went on.

You remember him, don’t you? Arthur Cohen, the wigmaker’s nephew. He went to school here in Bautzen; his uncle paid the fees. He was a good student.

Her father began coughing harder, and Martha glanced up from what she was doing at the washstand to look sternly at Helene. Her expression showed that she was afraid her relationship with Arthur Cohen might come to light. She didn’t want either her father or his guest to know about those walks by the Spree; she didn’t want anyone to know.

So now he’s studying in Heidelberg. Helene paused, took a deep breath; it wasn’t easy for her to utter the word Heidelberg and the explanation: Botany, that’s what he’s studying. And he sent us a letter, he wrote saying that there are women studying medicine in Heidelberg.

Now her father coughed so noisily that Helene’s words were lost, although she had taken great trouble to raise her voice. What else could she say to her father about Heidelberg and studying there? What would fire him with enthusiasm? She hesitated, but next moment he vomited as he coughed. Helene flinched back, taking the visitor’s walking stick with her. If she hadn’t clutched Martha’s dress, and then pushed herself off from the guest’s knees as he sat behind her, she would probably have stumbled and fallen straight on top of him. Since he stooped in the chair, she could easily have fallen on his head and shoulder.

As it was, Helene landed on the floor. Her eyes fell on the badges adorning Grumbach’s walking stick. The civic emblems of Weimar, Cassel, Bad Wildungen. Helene rose to her feet and handed back the stick.

Their guest shook his head. He got up too, took his wooden arm off the bed and placed himself beside Martha. He whispered, loud enough for Helene to hear him: I’m going to ask for your hand in marriage.

No, you are not. There was more contempt than fear in Martha’s voice.

Yes, I am, said their guest. Then he hurried downstairs and out of the door.

Martha and Helene washed their father. Martha showed Helene how to change the compresses on the stump of the leg and what proportion of morphine to add to the injection. She must go carefully, because the last dose wasn’t long ago. Under Martha’s watchful eye, Helene gave her father an injection, the first she had ever given anyone. She was pleased to see the relaxed smile that appeared on his face a little later, a smile that must be meant for her.

Next day, around noon, Grumbach knocked on his friend’s door again. Mariechen opened it. It had been snowing over the Lusatian Hills all night, and when she opened the door the light coming in from the street was so dazzling that Mariechen blinked. Snowflakes lay on the visitor’s hair. He was obviously wearing his best suit. He held not just his stick in his one hand, but also a little basket of walnuts, and they too wore little caps of snow.